i do. HOPES that is! expectations i keep somewhere near the middle cause that's how things usualy work out. i'm wary of pessimisim because pessimisim and optimisim both tend to be somewhat self fulfilling; but i am also wary of too much optomism because people tend to get careless when they don't think they have anything to worry about. for example i fear the oil isn't going to run out soon enough to save us from ourselves, all the harm we are carelessly doing with using combustion to generate cheep energy, they way i've been hoping and kind of half way expecting nearly all my life. not that i have any doubts that sooner or later it will. but soon ENOUGH has already come and gone. but i also know a lack of available energy in cheep and familiar forms needn't mean the end of useful tecnologies we come to expect and depend upon, only that we will be forced to adopt more sustainable means of creating it whether we want to or not. and by far environmental degradation has become the much greater threat to the experiential quality of the lives of those who survive either of them, then war itself, however much wars there may yet be before we get our collective heads out of our collective immaturity i also have every confidence however that we indeed at some time within the next thousand years at most do so. if only as a resault of having to for any of us to survive. though large numbers, even a many times over majority percentage, may perish due to famine as a resault, both of worsening environmental conditions, and of course the possibility of further gratuitous bloodshed as we have already seen. it is of course easy and not irrational to be pessimistic over the unwillingness of the vast majority to know which, how and how much of their comforts and conveninces are purchased with the blood of other people's pain, or even, their own. to what degree our survival as a species depends on their doing so is unkown, only that we could be saving each and every last one of our own selves a great deal of future pain by waking up about that still i have every reason to believe our species will have a brighter and greener future, if only after very dark and horrendous times we have every collective opportunity to avert should we collectively choose to do so. =^^= .../\...
It's basically the way the world works. It's not relaly working that well. we like to say that we're civilised, and I hate to sound all downbeat and miserable, but it isn't getting better. I'm not a manic depressive - far from it. i'm aguy who's making the most of life, when it's pretty much shit. There are still kids starving all over the world, there's still a lot of injustice, and religion is ensuring that any progression made will be minimal. really, I think it's time that we started on a clean slate, but that ain't gonna happen. So I don't really have high hopes for the future. It would be a lovely surprise to see life get better in the future, but it doesn't look like that will happen. I can't say I'm planning on having kids. I don't see the point. They'll just be born into a crappy world, and it's hit or miss whether they'll enjoy their life, or whether they'll hate it, and make other people miserable. I wish life were much simpler, yet it seems to be getting much more complicated. And I'm one of the people on this planet that's better off. I have food on my plate every evening, and I have access to hot water, a roof on my head, and if I get ill, i can easily go to hospital. There are many on this planet who aren't as well off as me, and it won't get better for them. So i can't say I have high hopes for the future. there'll still be injustice, and there'll still be people starving in the third world, and humans will still kill otehr humans and make them live in fear over some shitty religious squabble, but we'll have found new ways of killing each other. To me, not having kid sis my way of boycotting the future. It'll be shit, so I shan't bother with it. I'll just live out my remaining hours, doing what I can to make other people's lives good, as well as my own, and finish my life, and let the rest of humanity collapse.
Even if the odds of avoiding a major meltdown are miniscule, we should still try to do it. Why not adopt one of the kids you mention? 50 000 kids a day die from lack of food and basic medical care. We will hit a wall, I believe, but there is always a chance we could get together and do something in time to salvage something. If it does crash, we will get a clean slate, it is all good.
Ya, I'm on abit of a downer right now. I just feel like the whole world is going to shit, and there's nothing I can do about it. i guess that the moral of the story is "try to do something It's better than doing nothing"
there is NEVER a 'clean slate'. that is a bit of a myth. but there is nothing inevitable about the harm we cause by deceiving ourselves either. we are perfectly capable of collectively choosing not to. yes the only person you can absolutely do anything about IS yourself. but every thing we do has a statistical, statistical; NOT linear, influence, on everything else. everything from buying bubble gum to tying your shoes. it is up to us how much we think about what kind of a statistical impact everything we do has, but it has that, whether we choose to think about it or not. there is nothing inevitable other then that diversity will go right on being the nature of reality, whatever else sees fit to exist, and i have every reason to believe there are more different kinds of things then any ever has or can immage. it is of course perfectly true that if we keep making more and more dependent on things that are less and less reliable that sooner or later something is going to break one thing we KNOW is going to 'break' is that like all mineral resources, the cost of extracting the remaining oil from the ground will exceed the profitablity from doing so this will not happen all at once and may already have begun and neither killing people nor destroying natural habitat can reverse its inevitability. at some future point all of our energy production, even that for transportation, will come from noncombustion based sources. not because of anyone's aesthetic or moral sensabilities, but simply because there won't remain any other practical way of doing so. famine, disease and war are all avoidable, but they are not avoided when the avoidance of causing harm fails to be given a sufficently high priority. the price of energy WILL continue to rise, and will never again be as cheep as it was to fuel the tecnological evolution that charicterized the previous century. tecnologies which consume less energy and those which produce energy without relying on combustion will become increasingly popular. the greening of tecnology will become an essential of humanity's survival as a species. those who are fighting against social and environmental responsibility, do not have god on their side, or anything else, other then their own aquired and inhiereted momentum. it is causing a great deal of totaly unneccessary hardship that they are still creating the laws. i cannot say how soon, when, or in what way, this will chainge. only i have the assurance that all things do. it makes no sense to brood about the future and throw up our hands in dispair, when every breath we take is part of creating it. =^^- .../\...
Sometimes I despair too. But we need to be people of vision and insight, because what we think and do is a vital part of what we are all creating on this planet. We need to dream big, beautiful and expansive dreams and live every day in such a way that people will want to emulate us. Gradually the ripples of our actions spread out to touch others. We must focus on the positive, the beautiful and the balanced, because our attention is energy, and this energy will one day take form if we hold to the highest vision.
*=*=*=*=* this you are saying is exactly what i have felt and experienced. you are saying it better because you are saying it to the spirit / soul, which i am often times forgetting to do or how even to do so. ---- if we look to the more distant future what i see is perhaps as flawed an imperfect an experience of existing as is always perhapse the collective consensus. at the same time, beyond even what we would consider ecotopian by any standards of today if only out of the very survival of our own existence. the dross of our times will be as unfathomably beyond every day experience as those of times ancient to us are now. the challanges we will be faceing will be those we have not yet immagined while those we think are all consuming and insoluable today will be far behind us. our dreams indeed are our future and we must learn to dream them beyond what we have grown too comfortably (or in far too many cases uncomfortably) familiar with taking for granted. oil, automobiles and pavement will not be a part of that future, but cleaner, safer and more environmentaly sustainable infrastructure will. though i cannot say how much more or less of a direct roll it will play in our individual lives. a city of the mind, something like this internet, could potential take the place of the need or even desire for physical cities as we know them now to exist. advanced research will not be abondond, though the pace of tecnological evolution may slow (or it may not) but at any rate not to or beyond the point of becoming glacial. ----- you know i have my personal favorite dreams of mechanical transportation becoming once again guideway based for the most part and powered by storage systems capable of virtualy infinite constant recharging from highly effecient photovoltaic and other non combustive and possibly ambient sources. also built not to the excessive and inappropriate vehicular proportions with which we are familiar but to a more intimate scale and its guideway structure as well. of living in houses soundly but unconventionaly constructed using more the materials of the earth itself and harvesting less of our forrest habitate resources to do so. ----- if we forget all that the people who lived closer to nature and the land once learned, we will only find ourselves having to relearn this. especialy about how our futures begin in our dreams. and how it is leaf and fur and air and the earth itself that surrounds us and gives us life. whether or not there are cities in our future our future is not in them and not in the ways of thinking that are in them. i have seen what we can have and it does not require people being any more 'perfect' then we are now insight can spring from our own hearts from that mysterious place =^^= .../\...
I love what you wrote... Sometimes it scares me to think of what will have to happen to change the mess we have got ourselves into. But change we must. If only we can return to real values and not be blinded by the minutae of our daily existence. I can only hope that all of us hippies are teaching our children well and teaching them to have courage, for they will surely need it.
since oil and autos and such arent probably going to be in mankinds future then i better not get into a career involving autos then, or even get a CDL either, racing, flying, trains, planes, farming, shipping, etc., will all be affected in a bad way, just imagine it, sounds like the world would have problems functioning in this era, if this era still exists when oil does run out and if a good replacement energy source for getting freight moved and allowing ppl to travel is not found then just imagine how much different the world would be ...
Imagine how different the world WILL be, is my view. Wind, Tidal, Solar, Geothermal, and Fusion power will likely be the energy sources. There is another candidate that I feel has a good chance of redefining our energy source, and that is resonance. The Coral Castles is a fascinating example of the power that can be unleashed by harnessing forces that were used to construct it. But this is an as yet unsolved mystery.
