Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by sushil yadav, Jul 20, 2005.

  1. sushil yadav Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    64
    dixonmassey,

    There are 6 billion people in the world. Destruction of ecosystems will not stop if one person, one hundred people, one million people or even one billion people start living a simple life. All 6 billion people will have to live a simple life.

    Governments and Law Enforcement Agencies have labelled a few Environmentalists as EcoTerrorists.

    What are the charges against Environmental Activists? - Destruction of property? - endangering human life?

    The Military Industrial Complex is doing much more damage to property - it is going around carpet bombing entire countries - flattening entire countries. The Military Industrial Complex is endangering much more human life - it is actually killing - killing millions in War/ Violence - directly or indirectly.

    Who is the real Terrorist? - Environmentalists or Industrial Society?

    The human race has been destroying/ killing animals, trees, air, water, land and people from the very beginning of civilization. Science and Technology has increased this destructive capacity millions of times.

    Every man is a serial-killer. The per-capita destruction of Environment - per capita destruction of Animals, Trees, Air, Water and Land in Industrial Society is thousands of times greater than what it was 1000 years ago - 500 years ago - 200 years ago.

    Before Industrialization humans killed Environment primarily for Food. After industrialization humans are killing environment for Food and [unnecessary]Consumer Goods.

    Industrial Society is destroying necessary things[Animals, Trees, Air, Water and Land] for making unnecessary things[Consumer Goods].

    The Military Industrial Complex has killed millions of people in War/ Violence. It has decimated all plant and animal species. It has destroyed all ecosystems. It has polluted and poisioned the Sky, Land and Oceans. It has raped and plundered "Mother Earth" in the name of Progress and Development.

    The crimes of "Military Industrial Complex"are millions of times greater than the crimes of Environmentalists.

    Comparing the crimes of Environmentalists with the crimes of "Military Industrial Complex" is like comparing the Lamp with the Sun.

    The entire Industrial Society is a Terrorist.
    Science and Technology is the Terrorist.
    Military Industrial Complex is the Terrorist.
    Culture of Consumerism - culture of making, buying and selling is the Terrorist.


    sushil_yadav
    Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment
    ePhilosopher
    Corrupt
    ForeignPolicy
     
    Last edited: Sep 5, 2007
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  3. sushil yadav Registered Senior Member

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    When we make consumer goods we kill Animals/ Trees, Air/ Water and Land - directly or indirectly.

    Industrial Society destroys ecosystems - all Industrial Societies destroy ecosystems.

    It hardly matters whether it is "Capitalist Industrial Society" - "Communist Industrial Society" - or "Socialist Industrial Society".

    Industrial Society destroys ecosystems at every stage of its functioning.

    Raw material for industry is obtained by cutting up Forests. It is extracted by mining/ digging up the earth. It comes by destroying/ killing Trees, Animals and Land.

    Industries/ Factories use Water. The water that comes out of Factories is contaminated with hundreds of toxic chemicals. Industry kills Water. What to speak of Rivers - entire Oceans have been polluted.

    Industry/ Factories burn millions of tonnes of fuel and when raw material is melted/ heated up, hundreds of toxic chemicals are released into the atmosphere. Industry kills Air.

    Industrial Society has covered millions of square miles of land with cement and concrete. Industry kills Land.

    When consumer goods are discarded/ thrown away in landfills it again leads to destruction of ecosystems.

    When consumer goods are recycled hundreds of toxic chemicals are released into air, water and land.

    Consumer goods are sold/ marketed through a network of millions of kilometers of rail / road network and shipping routes which causes destruction of all ecosystems that come in the way.


    Growth Rate - Economy Rate - GDP.

    These are figures of "crimes against Nature".
    These are figures of "destruction of Ecosystems".
    These are figures of "Insanity, Abnormality and Criminality".


    sushil_yadav
    Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment
    ePhilosopher
    Corrupt
    ForeignPolicy
     
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  5. kmguru Staff Member

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    11,757
    Understand like what? Disease? Population growth? The future of humans? The nature of our Universe and our place in it?

    Thosands of years ago, we did not have 6 Billion people and soon this will double. How do you sustain say 20 Billion people? Force sterilization?


    How the science is forcing religious issues like no birth control, multiple wives, larger family?

    Just another POV
     
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  7. kmguru Staff Member

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    11,757
    Definitely that [mind destruction] also happened to Theodore Kaczynski [ The Unabomber Manifesto - Industrial Society and Its Future ] and his followers.

    Perhaps a better solution is needed?
     
  8. kmguru Staff Member

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    11,757
    Intro by Theodore Kaczynski

    1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering—even in "advanced" countries.

    2. The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: there is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy.

    3. If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later.

    One has to find solutions while inside a passenger ship in the middle of an ocean - not destroy the ship by directing to an iceberg.
     
  9. wesmorris Nerd Overlord - we(s):1 of N Valued Senior Member

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    9,846
    The frightening thing is that sushul, given the opportunity, would likely become that dude in 12 monkeys that flew around the world.
     
  10. Patrick Registered Member

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    6
    "We don't need more science or more scientific proof. Science is not the solution - Science is the problem."

    Agreed. A sustainable city would closely resemble a medieval city, self-sufficient in agriculture and compact in size. No new technology or scientific "breakthrough" is required to build such a city. Planners concerned for the future have been advocating for the type of city I describe for several decades now, ever since urban sprawl became the dominant paradigm in the 1950's (and even before that).

    Sushil, I was wondering if you were aware of the philosopher Lewis Mumford. He makes an interesting distinction between two types of societies, Monotechnic, and Polytechnic. A Monotechnic society dedicates itself to technology at the expense of human welfare. Examples of a Monotechnic society would be the civilization that built the pyramids in Egypt, World Wars I and II, and modern day American civilization. Polytechnic societies use technology only where it is beneficial to humans, which would ultimately mean technology which did not harm the environment since humans depend on the environment. Technology in this sense is used to mean even simple tools.
     
  11. kmguru Staff Member

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    11,757
    Examples of such society...please...
     
  12. Patrick Registered Member

    Messages:
    6
    Looks like my definitions were slightly off. Polytechnic/Monotechnic was used to refer to the type of technology, not society. From the wikipedia article:

    A key idea, introduced in Technics and Civilization (1934) was that technology was twofold:

    Polytechnic, which enlists many different modes of technology, providing a complex framework to solve human problems.
    Monotechnic which is technology only for its own sake, which oppresses humanity as it moves along its own trajectory.
    Mumford commonly criticized modern America's transportation networks as being 'monotechnic' in their reliance on cars. Automobiles become obstacles for other modes of transportation, such as walking, bicycle and public transit, because the roads they use consume so much space and are such a danger to people. Mumford explains that the thousands of maimed and dead each year as a result of automobile accidents are a "ritual sacrifice" the American society makes because of its extreme reliance on highway transport.
     
  13. kmguru Staff Member

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    11,757
    I agree. However a disruptive Technology presented a solution to that 'monotechnic' nightmare. That is the advent of Internet and Information Technology. I read Alvin Toffler's book in 1983 and was hoping that by new century, people would not need automobiles to go to work and use computers to work at home thus creating beautiful villages with minimal "monotechnic' pollution. And use bicycles to tool around the village.

    While technology presented the solution - the human greed has sent those jobs overseas thus creating more problems. In northern Louisiana, at the I-20 corridor, we have massive fiber optic lines (8000+ strands) that connects to the world. Yet no one is interested to take advantage of the small towns and technical college community around this area.

    We definitely need a globally interconnected village culture that will reduce stress in daily life. That is the real solution. Let us use technology in the pursuit of our hapiness as was started from the first fire.
     
  14. Patrick Registered Member

    Messages:
    6
    A lot of jobs that require people to commute to their office are entirely unecessary. We create meaningless work for people to do becaues we assign purchasing power according to the value of one's labor, but now machines do all the work for us so we have to come up with worthless work, so that people can continue to buy the products of Industry. Over 98% of all labor today is performed by machines. If we simply eliminated all the useless and wasteful production (and related employment) we are engaged in today, and banned the use of non-renewable and non-recyclable materials/energy, than we could produce an abundance of necessary goods (food, shelter, clothing, medicine, etc) that would essentially be free. Of course, human greed will probably prevent this from ever happening.
     
  15. kmguru Staff Member

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    11,757
    The development of human brain has not kept up with the development of computers (Moore's Law) and hence the problem. Greed that was useful at the dawn of the civilization is working against the common good.

    People are reluctant to think out-of-the-box. The other day, this multi-billion dollar company was looking for an out of the box thinker to implement change management in their company. When I sent my resume which has color graphic flow diagrams (a picture is worth a thousand words!), they wanted a text based resume (in these PowerPoint days!) as if they are in the green screen age.

    There are a lot of managers out there that do not like color and picture/ graphic presentations. So much for human development!
     
  16. Grantywanty Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,888
    Self-interest and greed were not where the company failed, quite the contrary. They should have been more open minded and FOR THEIR OWN SAKES.

    The failures of what we call greed are that it tends to have such a narrow focus. Those with destructive greed have a problem not because they desire too much, but because they desire so much in tiny little categories: money or power. It is because they defined themselves and how one can enjoy and feel good in life in such a restricted manner.

    We do not need to shut down their selfishness, but open it up.
     
  17. dixonmassey Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,151
    Destruction of environment (sometimes suicidal, like that on Easter Island) is hardly Industrial Society phenomenon. Slaveowning, feudal societies were quite good at it too. Invention of Agriculture was the first (still lasting) disaster for Nature&Environment.

    Belief in science as an everlasting booster of consumption is a problem. Science, not the one practiced by the university-industrial complex, makes life more interesting for some.
     
  18. Patrick Registered Member

    Messages:
    6
    The products of technology have been misused for so long that the word itself now has a negative connotation in the minds of most environmentally conscious people. According to Webster: "(Technology is) ...the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area" and "a capability given by the practical application of knowledge"
    Often the word technology is used to refer to the products of technology, rather than technology itself.
     
  19. sushil yadav Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    64
    Patrick,

    I have not done a detailed study of Lewis Mumford and his work - but I have read a lot about him in various forums, so I have some idea about his views.

    An Industrial Society cannot be sustainable - It destroys ecosystems for making [unnecessary] consumer goods. Industrial Society is the cause of environmental destruction.

    The situation is similar to "Science and Technology" trying to find a cure for Cancer.

    The claim of "science and technology" of curing cancer is a joke.

    "Science and Technology" can never cure cancer - it is impossible.
    "Science and Technology" is the cause of cancer.

    Most of cancer is caused by toxic chemicals - carcinogens. Industrial Society has flooded the ecosystems with toxic chemicals. Land - Air - Water - the entire food chain is contaminated with thousands of man-made toxic chemicals which did not exist before industrialiation. Most of the Farm Land has been poisoned with pesticides due to Industrial Agriculture.

    There are hundreds of man-made, toxic chemicals in the blood, bones and tissue of humans. There are toxic, man-made chemicals in the placenta of new born babies.

    What is now happening is this.

    Industrial Society is causing millions of cancer every year.

    Out of these millions of cases, "science and technology" is able to treat a small percentage - a few thousand cases - through surgery, radiation and chemotherapy etc...

    And these treatments can hardly be called real treatments because the toxic chemicals which are the root cause of cancer still exist in the environment. This is also the reason why there is a high rate of relapse/ recurrence after cancer treatment.

    An Industrial Society can never prevent high incidence of cancer, because it is flooding the environment with chemicals all the time.

    Same way, we can never have sustainability as long as we are making thousands of consumer goods. If we want sustainability we have to bring down consumer goods to the minimum level.

    sushil_yadav
    Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment
    ePhilosopher
    Corrupt
    ForeignPolicy
     
    Last edited: Sep 14, 2007
  20. wesmorris Nerd Overlord - we(s):1 of N Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,846

    This is simply drawing a conclusion from nothing. You can't support it, because "industrial society" is always changing. It evolves over time. You're assuming that industrial society never does anything good "the ecosystem", nor can it ever. Since you cannot read the future, and it looks as if, given current trends of technology - that "industrial society" is learning about its own impact on "the ecosystem" and attempting to change itself to meet governmental demands, etc.

    Perhaps you simply mean "at the current pace" instead of "can never" or whatever. I don't think so however.

    .

    ? That statement is a much bigger joke, and quite telling as to your understanding of science and technology. You apparently don't have the slightest clue.

    So according to you, there was no cancer prior to technology? Are you too stupid to see you're bashing the entire species. Seriously? Okay look, you could be correct on the technicality that there was no technology before man, because the "advent of man" is basically defined by his capacity for creating it. This undoubtedly means that before humans, yes there may have been no cancer in humans. Otherwise I'd think you have to be quite wrong about that part. Even if you weren't, your conclusion is still utterly unfounded. That something is a cause, especially "science and technology", does not preclude it from solving a problem it caused. What the hell is wrong with you?

    Uhm, radioactive elements can cause cancer and predate man. Hence again, your utterly innane premise is busted - yet you pour on your egotistical rhetoric. I find it reprehensible.

    Yet somehow food keeps coming out of it, and animals still exist. Please, find a non rhetorical point? Use your brain for something besides being an egotistical emo? Seriously, I would love to stop insulting you - but you won't stop insulting reason, and I find that horrifically insulting.

    Yet they live longer on average than at any time throughout their history. For chrissake, you're just making shit up. You're telling a tragedy and cashing in on falsely garnered sympathy to gratify your apparently rather bloated sence of "damn I'm smooth" without even fucking realizing it. It's just PATHETIC.

    Yet the species is more in number than ever before. Weird. What's worse is that the ill-informed, ill-equipped yet self-righteous putzes like yourself spread retarded doom and gloom prophecy as if you are in some way warranted, annointed even. You're self-righteous and preachy, just like I'm being. I'm preaching to YOU however, about how dumb and egotistical you are - such that verily somedayeth (gaia willing), you will pull your head out of that smelly hole behind you and do something actually productive - or at least have some goddamned humility.

    Seriously, you are fucking dumb. That this is true does not mean it will always be true. What's hard to understand about that? If you paid attention, you'd have noticed that there are LOTS of very promising research paths underway, some with demonstrated results in lab animals or petri dishes or whatever. Cancer will be gone in 30 years tops, given that some asshat like yourself doesn't find a means by which to extinct us.

    And your words can hardly be taken seriously. Seriously. So certainly "man-made" anything isn't the exclusive cause of cancers, which doesn't really matter I guess because regardless of the cause, cure is completely plausible and forthcomingly possible. Mostly likely however, due to the assholes in business, a "sustaining substance" is prefereable to "a cure", as they can milk far more serious money out of sustaining people. And they'll try to make it look necessary. That will work for a time most likely, but like the RIAA, most likely the time for that type of business will come and go. Again assuming of course, that asshats like yourself do not figure out a way to end the world.


    But, what if they cure cancer and determine how to make chemical stuff enhance the environment rather than make it worse? Worse by what standard? What if in fact, we can figure out the entire human genome and how to manipulate it directly for the desired human output? Then what genius? Your problem is that you just forgo any whatif that doesn't support your premise of the really awefully bloody heart, which makes you and emo pimp - which is disgusting even moreso than a real pimp maybe.

    Without discussing the details of how they are made, your attempts fail. IF there is a society, there will be consumer goods.

    It is arguable that they are already at the minimum level, but of course you probably couldn't comprehend that argument, and what YOU value outweighs all else in your puny little mind.

    Gah. It's just a sad thing to see you try to support what should be a noble point with no more than propaganda and cheap, thoughtless rhetoric.
     
  21. kmguru Staff Member

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    11,757
    I wonder it has something to do with "Science and Technology"

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  22. sushil yadav Registered Senior Member

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    64
    wesmorris,

    You need to be packed off to the mental asylum for all the nonsense that you wrote in your last comment.

    Go and tell all that nonsense to the people of Iraq where cancer rates have skyrocketed after your brave soldiers carpet bombed the entire country with depleted uranium weapons.

    Go and tell all that nonsense to the mothers of thousands of "deformed babies" that are being born in Iraq every month after being exposed to depleted uranium.

    sushil_yadav
    Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment
    ePhilosopher
    Corrupt
    ForeignPolicy
     
  23. wesmorris Nerd Overlord - we(s):1 of N Valued Senior Member

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    Emo pimp scumbag.
     

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