Originally posted by Pollux V
I'm confident that at the speed technology is advancing that us westerners will have plenty of complex gadgetry to contend with. For now, yes, I'd agree, we're naturally good with computers, but it won't always be that way. Something will replace them eventually, and your trump card of this argument will be invalidated.
You're just an irrepressible fountain of pessimism, aren't you?
Everybody with a little brains was at that age. As you get older it isn't so much that things change, you just do a recount and find that things aren't as hopeless as they looked forty years ago.
But yes, the big problem with the Information Age is that it has destroyed what is arguably the key to Homo sapiens's success. We don't learn and die as individuals. We pass it on to the next generation so they don't have to start from zero. Well guess what, everything we know is useless to the next generation. My dad spent a lot of time teaching me how to keep a car running, but my car might as well have a decal on the hood saying, "Warning, no user serviceable parts inside."
I've been in IT for 35 years but it's difficult to pass my wisdom on to people whose computers broadcast pictures of them going potty and store their files on little cocaine mirrors. If IT keeps advancing as fast as it has, nobody will be able to keep up with it. But wait a minute, that seems like quite a paradox. If nobody understands computers, who the hell is going to keep developing the new hardware and software that makes the next generation even more impossible to understand? Eventually this technology lag is going to catch up with everybody, even the nerdiest of the nerds, and it will have to stagger to a halt while everybody catches up.
It's not possible to have a Paradigm Shift happen in every generation. Humanity cannot continue to survive, much less advance, if
nobody can pass on their knowledge to the kids.
I'm going to take your word for it on this [overcrowded schools]--but was it as bad back then as it is now?
No it wasn't, but it didn't have to be. There's a certain maximum class size and a certain minimum discipline level and a certain rate of defection of superior teachers, beyond which the government's school systems simply can't operate. We reached that around 1980. What's happened since has made the hours you kids spend in the school building even more unpleasant than ever, but the process of education ground to a halt long ago.
No, liberals want change, conservatives want things to be more traditional. Both sides have their place, however at the moment the world is not perfect, therefore it could be better. It can only get better by thinking up new ideas and putting them to use. Thus, while liberalism should not run rampant, and should be gradual instead, it is and should be the prevalent force in modern-day politics.
You're talking about a dictionary defintion of liberal and conservative, not the actual movements in the US today. Liberals advocate censorship of inconvenient ideas in the universities. Conservatives want color-blind admissions policies to those same universities. The two sides flip-flop so often that it's getting really hard to tell them apart. As I said, they're just the two Conferences in the Republocrat League.
Democracy and freedom of speech has made this easier, although like I mentioned earlier, we have a long way to go. When everyone on Earth is happy, then it'll be time to be conservative.
When everyone on Earth is happy, the conservatives will be complaining that life has gotten too easy, and the liberals will be looking for a way to tax happiness.
I tend to think of myself at the moment as a socialist-capitalist hybrid.
You've certainly become the master of cognitive dissonance.
However because I don't know that much about libertarians if you have any websites or information I could look at I would oblige you.
Liberty and Reason magazines speak for the movement about as eloquently as anybody. Unfortunately I don't think either of them is available online. Not enough of a subscriber base.
I disagree. When you have less government you leave more room for the corrupt rich to take over and oppress. It's the same arguments those bastard republicans have been yapping about for as long as I've been interested in politics--that the government should stay out of the way. When that happens in a democratic country the middle and lower classes suffer more. The rich cannot be in charge of the rest of us, they need to be policed. Thus, strong government is the only answer to the world's problems. As long as it is a fair strong government.
Well you ended that argument with the most blatant oxymoron I've seen in a long time. There's
no such thing as a "fair strong government." It's a universal truth that power corrupts. The only way to keep people or institutions from becoming corrupt and unfair is to keep their power limited. Our biggest problem in the West is the rise of the Corporation. Adam Smith would be turning over in his grave watching these scavengers stomping around on his "level playing field" of a free market, pretending to be of roughly equivalent power and influence to all the other players. And the concept of the holding company would make him barf: a corporation that exists for the sole purpose of owning other corporations, that actually produces no goods or services but just skims profits off the top of the economy. And where do you think the Corporation came from? Big Government invented it. With the demise of the aristocracy it became difficult for the government to conceal its own misdeeds, so they created a New Aristocracy. Corporations have all the power and influence of feudal lords, and no accountability. You can't execute one or throw it in jail, and it just laughs off even the largest fines and passes them on to its customers.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Big Government got us where we are today by creating the very institutions that are strangling our economy and taking away our freedom by purely civil means, such as forcing us to drive ever longer distances to work so no one is home when their children are awake.
Quality of life on Earth now is largely better than it ever has been because of America. I love where I live, who I live near, and the benefits my nation has to offer.
I feel blessed to have been born here instead of in Azerbaijan also. But America is as much an accident of history as the product of a great and noble people. The Europeans got here before these Indians had found their way out of the Mesolithic Era, so there were a lot more untapped resources than the European settlers of Latin America found to exploit in the wake of the blunders of the Olmec/Maya/Aztec and Inca civilizations.
But I hate the stupidity, the lies, the huge stockpile of nuclear weapons, and the short-term-economic-solutions to every single goddamn foreign policy problem this nation has been faced with.
I find it too coincidental that this nadir of public stupidity and gullibility coincides with the Dark Ages of the Paradigm Shift. I think it's just an unfortunate confluence of negative forces that is too much for most mortals to bear. The end of the familiar old Cold War, the fourth awakening of Islam, and everybody's job is being replaced by a workstation that nobody knows how to operate. That's a lot to bear. Especially for a generation that was promised a 30-hour week, flying cars, the demise of the Abrahamic religions, and commercial-free subscription TV featuring an all-Shakespeare channel.
So much of my happiness has been fueled by the spilt blood of others, of other innocents.
You've just got to get up off of your knees long enough to get history in perspective. I don't know which particular "innocents" you're talking about, but I'm going to let you in on a little Guild Secret here, and you have to promise not to tell any outsiders or we'll make you go live in the women's teepee.
There ain't no innocents!You talking about the American Indians? Which ones? The Na-Dene, the second wave of migration from Siberia that pushed all the Athabascans out of the American West and made them all go live in Mexico and Central America? The Apaches, Blackfoot, Comanche,Navajo, Hopi, Sioux and all the others who chased each other back and forth across the continent, stealing the land back and forth? Or their distant ancestors who managed to hunt the mastodons to extinction? Or maybe you've got roots in Europe. My people, the Czechs, sure got a bad deal from the Russians, Germans, Hungarians, Prussians, and everybody else. Of course, the reason they live in a land we still call "Bohemia" is that when they first got there around 250BCE, they killed off or ran off the "Bohumil," the Celtic people who thought they'd already staked out that piece of territory. The history of the human race is an endless saga of the strong stealing the homes of the weak, the humans defiling the environment, and civilizations using their power to subjugate their pastoral neighbors. This is no excuse to run out and start killing people, but it's a good reason to stop groveling in shame for what your ancestors did to somebody else's ancestors. In a historical context, it's a universal truth that what goes around comes around, usually several times.
My well being is not equal to another person's mere survival, and given a choice, I would give up my life if all of the wrongs committed throughout the nation's history could be righted.
Well, lucky for you and for all of us who love you, that choice isn't on today's menu. Another little secret: You can't right past wrongs. All you can do is build a future in which it's easier for everyone to get along without committing so many wrongs. The attempt to right past wrongs merely gets you into an Israel-Palestine thing or a Belfast thing. Not only do two wrongs never make a right, but if one wrong is old enough, it can never be made into anything but what it is. History isn't Right or Wrong, it's Just There. It's a lesson for us to learn from, not Jacob Marley's Chain, dragging us into a useless and powerless life of eternal penance.
The key is the media. AOL Time Warner will have to pass into the hands of someone not in the pocket of either the Democratic or Republican parties for true reform and progression to occur. This is something I can't quite put my finger on. The American news media is the most powerful political entity on the planet, if it can be called a single entity. Excepting Democracy Now and NPR it is largely held in support of the nation. But I don't know what it has to gain from this. Only the politicians gain power and money through the media's support, the media gets nothing. If the media were to turn on the politicians, turn public opinion around (which, given the right tools, seems remarkably easy), true reform could happen. The rich would stop getting richer. That sort of thing. We'd have people telling the truth in Congress instead of people that lie--no more lesser of two evils. Voices that mean to do good would gain support because they'd actually be heard. The old system would undoubtedly break down in one or two congressional terms. I see nothing that the media has to gain by support of the country. Absolutely nothing. They could be the power-wielders. The politicians could be their lapdogs, begging for mercy all the time, "please don't release this report, oh please oh please, I'll give you CSPAN-2!"
You've got a very good point there. I'm tempted to write this whole fucked-up media thing as just one more artifact of a poorly timed Paradigm Shift. The populace simply isn't paying attention because it's in a constant state of shock. If this does not change soon, before the Evil People, whoever they are, secure their control over everything, then yes, America is on its way to becoming the next Argentina. Except Argentina with nukes, of course.
But you're wondering how this sycophantic media frenzy is helping anybody? Haven't you noticed that the government has allowed a handful of people to own an increasing share of the media outlets? One guy can now own a hundred TV stations and a thousand radio stations and a zillion newspapers. That makes that one guy awfully indebted to the government who put him in power. You're right that it would be hard for the government to seize control of all media outlets, but they don't have to. All they need is the deed to Ted Turner's ass and a few others.
Once again, the Corporation rears its ugly head. If you want to make a Difference, help me figure out how to rid the world of corporations.
I have to give this some more thought, but I believe that Bush will win so wholeheartedly that I will do something incredibly stupid if he does in fact win. Streak through the neighborhood or something. It is impossible. The man cheated before, even in the primaries. He'll do it again, and like before, no one will stop him.
He has a lot more really angry enemies among the general popluation than he did when he was just George Senior's backward little baby boy. I don't think he could pull of a scam in a redneck state a second time. The first time he just caught everyboy flat-footed with surprise that anybody could be that brazen. The second time they'll just lynch him, his brother, and the camel they rode in on.
That's because it's true damnit!! [Space travel is easier to accomplish than Peace On Earth.] Do you happen to get Discover? Great magazine. Last month's article was on sending a ship to a nearby star, if we find a habitable planet or moon there. Could be done in twenty years if the right resources were committed.
The operative words being "if" and "could." Those are big impediments. Like I said, you're being optimistic about something that a reasonable man might say has way less than a 50-50 chance of being pulled off. Why not practice some of that optimism-in-the-face-of-discouraging-statistics on some of the earth's other problems?
There are lots of teenagers who actually don't know how Bush stole the last election. Somebody needs to explain it to them.
There are lots of Euro- an Asian-Americans who could easily be talked into checking the "black," "hispanic," or "native American" box on their college applications, forcing the universities to abide by the will of a majority of the population and four Supreme Court justices, and stop noticing the color of people's skins. Somebody needs to encourage them to do that.
There are lots of kids whose parents did a really crappy job of raising them, but miraculously they've stayed on a righeous path. They need Big Brothers and Big Sisters to initiate them into the next phase of their life, whether its high school, college, or getting a job. Somebody needs to volunteer for that.
And no, I don't do any of those particular things, but I help a lot of adults, teaching them English, stuff like that. I try to carry my weight.
I guess I erased your remark about how only the government can take care of the suffering, because without my original quote it didn't make sense. Anyway, you're dead wrong about that. Americans have consistently been the most generous people on Earth. Our poor and lame and even our stupid were once looked after by private charities such as the Salvation Army. It's only since the tax rates got so high that we finally caved in and said OK, they've got so much of our money we've got no choice but to let them take care of the charity sector.
Unfortunately that huge bundle of our money mostly goes into the pockets of bureaucrats and the corporations who got them into power. If the government would just take all the money that goes into its budget for "taking care of the poor" and then vanishes into a black hole, and instead just divided it up and handed it directly over to the poor, every American family now on welfare would have an annual income of $40,000!
Now, once again, what's that you were saying about the power of government? It works for about two generations, then it becomes corrupted. It's been way too long now. Time to take that power back.
