David Quinn wrote: ↑Thu May 23, 2019 9:59 am
jupiviv wrote: ↑Thu May 23, 2019 5:10 am
On the contrary, I see cars and a lot of other things becoming useless (if not "eliminated") sometime in the next few/several decades, whether voluntarily or otherwise. And why unrealistic? You might say it is *unfeasible* given human nature and the structure/dependencies of societies and economies, but it's 100% realistic.
It is unrealistic given people's deep attachment to cars, and to the economic benefits they engender. Without cars, the entire modern economy would grind to a halt. Everyone knows this, which is why it will never happen (at least voluntarily).
There will inevitably be major economic repercussions for a collective global rejection of cars, but it won't grind everything to a halt. There are many other ways of travelling like buses, trains, bicycles. There are also ways in which car owners can change their lifestyles, like moving away from the suburbs and closer to work, or working from home. You asked me for a solution and this is one that, if pursued earnestly, will definitely cause a significant reduction in fossil fuel usage.
A far more realistic solution is the
hydrogen car, which is continuing to make advances. As far as the general public is concerned, the hydrogen car is likely to be a far more acceptable alternative than the electric car. The rednecks and hillbillies won't find them as girlie.
That isn't so much a solution as a fairy tale where science-magic makes the actual problem vanish. Firstly, hydrogen is an energy *carrier* (like a battery), not an energy *source* (like coal). It has to be produced and then energised, both of which require energy. Besides that, most hydrogen is produced from natural gas, which itself is an energy *source* that is also used to power engines.
Even assuming everything predicted about the commercial applications of this new material is true, which is unlikely, there remains the problem of building an entire hydrogen-based transport infrastructure - plants, pipelines, employees, investment etc. - and justifying the cost-benefit of replacing the current one. In conclusion then, I wouldn't hold your breath.
I'd say the answer is some version of "less", because that is what will happen either way. This world doesn't have an infinite amount of resources, and science isn't magic. While we cannot control any of the above, we can radically alter the way we think about the relationship between civilisation and the things that sustain it. If we do that, we may end up better as a species than if we hadn't.
I can't disagree with this. The question is, how do we make it happen?
A significant minority of the human race has to become enlightened or at least realise that our current civilisation is not sustainable and urgently requires reorganisation. Failing either of those, conservation by "other means".
Individuals can be agents of great change but Trump is not even close to being such.
I think you have your mental blinkers on. You are allowing yourself to be taken in by his surface show of buffoonery, while ignoring the malignancy and ruthless cunning that is powering it behind the scenes. (etc. etc.)
Modi was elected in 2014 and was on very good terms with Obama, who visited India twice since then.
Right populism/reactionism gains power when it can use the economic precarity and social alienation of various sections of the working/middle class under late stage capitalism to turn them against more conventional, "friendly" representatives of the same system. Once in power, it either cannot or does not intend to (or both) alleviate those problems beyond putting up a good show or bribing sections of its supporters with short-term promises of wealth and glory. Trump is an especially bad POTUS in terms of character and intelligence, but close to the median in terms of the actual functioning of his admin. Bush was considerably worse on foreign policy, unless of course they go to war with Iran (which seems likelier by the day).
The Trump admin's primary aim since the beginning has been to establish a stronger executive which could function as a Bonapartist office when SHTF later on.
Your emotional hatred for the Democrats, and indeed for the liberal statement, and for mainstream media, and for science, is causing you to be disconnected from reality when it comes to these matters.
Hillary is a conservative on everything except abortion and Marvel movies. Her campaign was a disaster because she had nothing to offer but vague platitudes to the disenfranchised and debt-ridden. Bernie would have mobilised many, many more voters than Hillary did.
I think liberals and the MSM are as capable of lying, hypocrisy or malignancy as any right winger or Breitbart columnist, under the right conditions. That isn't hatred. I don't hate science, but rather its usage (as authority, rationale, abstruse vocabulary etc.) in bad faith towards dishonest and irrational ends.
And it's kind of ridiculous when an objective fax-based sage responds to a statement beginning with "I agree", with accusations of emotional hatred!
This is not to say that the Democrats are not without their flaws (and your observation that they have been bowing down far too much to their rich donors does indeed have merit), but to say that the bunch of low-grade sociopaths, grifters and scam-artists currently enabling Trump's criminal enterprise are somehow in the same class as those who work for the Democrats is laughable.
To say that a Hillary admin would not be run by the finance/IPO/gambling class is a perfect example of Trump Derangement. This is what I was talking about before - you want to believe a large and easily identifiable section of the human race approves of the Genius worldview in a small and marginal way.
It is in the very nature of religion to intrude.
Religion is (at best) documentary justification for intrusion, not an intruder. But I see you went on to say more or less the same thing, so I'm assuming we agree on this point.
The quality of a person's consciousness doesn't derive from the number of connections he makes, or how fast his brain is able to make them; rather, it derives from the quality of thoughts and insights that his brain's connections generate.
The quality of an insight depends on how interconnected it is to other experiences and insights, i.e. context, scope, application etc. The thought "everything is the same" can have a shallow or deep meaning, depending on what *else* is thought. It's like the Buddha's warning about gurus who are right about nine things and wrong about the tenth. If someone can reason properly about nine things but not a tenth, there is something wrong with his reasoning.
One could define high and low quality thoughts as being true and false respectively, but such a definition isn't very useful imo.
The yawning chasm is not due to a higher type or grade of conscious experience. To put it succinctly, it is exactly the same as an actual chasm.
I'm not quite sure what you are trying to say here. The yawning chasm is indeed an actual chasm, and it exists because enlightened consciousness is indeed radically different from ordinary consciousness. Whether we want to call it higher or deeper or just radically different depends on how we want to look at it.
The physical space between two ordinary things is filled with other ordinary things (like air), and can be bridged by ordinary things (like bridges). In the same way the metaphysical space between ordinary and enlightened consciousness is filled with ordinary unconscious mental activity (like emotions), and can be bridged by ordinary conscious thoughts. There is no *inherently* wise thought. There may be specific experiences that seem to cause more wisdom in specific instances, but even those depend on factors other than the inherent quality, grade or type of the thought/experience itself.