Thoughts of a New World

Is Peace Possible?

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:36:50 +0300

a cold war made gunsnow held by the children of Africaas the soldiers of unwitting tyrannyfighting...

Tue, 21 May 2013 15:20:48 +0300

a cold war made guns
now held by the children of Africa
as the soldiers of unwitting tyranny
fighting for kings and generals and ceo’s
AK-47 rebels against a system they cant understand

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Tue, 21 May 2013 12:56:49 +0300

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is peace possible?

Tue, 21 May 2013 09:26:00 +0300

I’m running a poll of my followers (and their followers if anyone cares to reblog), please respond with a number, or detailed answer:

do you think that global peace is realistically possible?

1- Yes, it is, and all it would take is the removal of subversive elements such as Structural Violence, Institutional Racism, Neo-Colonialism, and other similarly harmful socio-economic practices. And the inclusion of co-operative practices which encourage positive social behaviour.

2- Yes, but the subversive and harmful socio-economic practices are deeply entrenched, so it is very unlikely and would take several generation at the very least.

3- No, the subversive and harmful socio-economic practices are too deeply ingrained, and it is more likely that global warfare will persist to the point of social and/or environmental collapse.

4- No, the human species is genetically hard-wired for violence, and Warfare is an inevitable result of growing populations requiring ever more resources.

yaleuniversity: Yale researchers used light to probe the...

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:50:56 +0300

yaleuniversity:

Yale researchers used light to probe the actions of the neurotransmitter GABA on single synapses along the branches of a neuron.

This photo shows a mouse cortical neuron in red, with dendritic branches that are studded with synaptic spines. Surrounding the neuron are inhibitory axons or fibers (in blue) that are genetically engineered to release GABA when activated by light, a technique known as optogenetics. Learn more →

smartercities: Cities Embracing the Green Revolution |...

Mon, 20 May 2013 17:13:30 +0300

smartercities:

Cities Embracing the Green Revolution | ThisBigcity

An interesting view of sustainability in six cities

she turned, her great girth giving birthshe burned, her cruel cancer stealing worth

Sun, 19 May 2013 22:17:09 +0300

she turned, her great girth giving birth
she burned, her cruel cancer stealing worth

"Here’s to the love that lies in people’s eyes. And lies, and lies, and lies."

Sun, 19 May 2013 16:40:49 +0300

“Here’s to the love that lies in people’s eyes. And lies, and lies, and lies.”

"in the quiet moments of the morning only my thoughts keep me from drifting apart I am nothing,..."

Sat, 18 May 2013 23:48:30 +0300

“

in the quiet moments of the morning
only my thoughts keep me from drifting apart

I am nothing, embodied in everything.
I am something, but I could be anything.

Thoughts, tying my realities
Into knots of unrealistic imaginings.

When I wake, will I be me,
Or will this life be a wisp of memory?

”

"Normal - the enforced mentality of one that is enslaved."

Sat, 18 May 2013 21:12:01 +0300

“Normal - the enforced mentality of one that is enslaved.”

Tim Hawkinson - Mobius Ship (2011)

Sat, 18 May 2013 15:03:22 +0300

Tim Hawkinson - Mobius Ship (2011)

Morals and ethical questions are based on societal or religious teachings. They give us the false...

Sat, 18 May 2013 12:13:04 +0300

Morals and ethical questions are based on societal or religious teachings. They give us the false perception that there is a right or wrong answer to the questions we’re asking. The answers themselves have perceived ethical value, not actual ethical value. Because actual ethical value is a variable intellectual construct. It doesn’t actually exist. I’m not saying there is no right or wrong, i’m saying that it is impossible to know right from wrong without knowing EVERYTHING about the given topic. The best we can hope for is a balanced moral relativism which we patch with laws and government.

Unless we shift the paradigm….

Let’s leap ahead to a Global Post-Scarcity Society that is fully implemented and functional. Society at large is working within a system that provides maximum abundance for and of everything we know we need as a species to survive. But, since this includes almost every other living organism on the planet, we are tasked with establishing the needs of our fellow planetary inhabitants to ensure their survival. Science has been scratching the surface on this front for decades and biologists are beginning to learn far more than they ever expected about the fauna and flora of our planet. About the communication techniques used by plants within vast ecosystems about the true nature of balance in networked communities. In this hypothetical society, the question is never asked of us: “do we need this resource in order to survive?” because the question is moot, of course we need this resource to survive, we need it all to survive because it is vastly interlinked. but resource allocation is not up to us and our opinions. if that resource is needed elsewhere, perhaps a 3D factory providing sustainable housing parts, regardless of market demand for new barbie doll handbags if it is an oil-based plastic, then that is where the resource must go. Our survival is part of the greater survival of the planet. we are dependent on it, and it on us. this understanding of symbiosis and dynamic life cycles changes how we approach resource usage.

Now this seems difficult to align with our current thinking and systems, but thankfully it only seems that way. We already understand the interlinked nature of the world a little better thanks to the internet, our sciences are uncovering the means to communicate with the rest of the life on the planet, and everywhere i look i’m seeing more and more people waking up to this new world where we are more an more capable, again, thanks to the internet. As the rest of the systems on the planet crumble, the internet is showing us faster and faster just how relative our ethics are, and we are beginning to see the new ways of approaching life, that permit for us to put morals and ethics aside and make correct decisions that benefit all.

"If people cannot be trusted, and so need to be governed by laws, how can people be trusted to create..."

Sat, 18 May 2013 08:41:36 +0300

“If people cannot be trusted, and so need to be governed by laws, how can people be trusted to create just laws.”

on the death penalty...

Sat, 18 May 2013 08:33:30 +0300

Friend: I would rather spend resources on raising healthy children and improving life for non-homicidal people than use those resources to reform killers.

Me: "A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its
weakest members." ~ Mahatma Ghandi

Friend: Killers aren't our weakest members, they are the members that...well KILL our weakest members.

Me: Killers are the members of society most deeply affected by 'the system'. By judging their actions and not the cause of their actions, we legitimize the system. And how is it weak to be a victim of murder? The weakness of our time is a weakness of spirit and rational thought. How we treat that weakness, says everything about who we are.

Friend: You think it's more compassionate of society to toss them in prison for life (it's not their fault after all) or leave them to kill others, rather than apply the death penalty? Even if I were to have that mechanical view of humankind, I would still say it serves the greater societal interest and is the most humane to apply the death penalty.

Me: Your genes and your environment combined produce your unique perspective on the world. Within your own reference frame, morality is a rigid concept and your choices can almost never escape the confines of your own world-view. But true morality is an ideological construct, and your perspective of it is completely relative to other perspectives of it. Those who have been surrounded by the conditions that are likely to produce violent individuals, are likely to be violent. Yes there is a choice, but the options are limited by environmental setting. Not accounting for this is what is TRULY inhumane, since being able to fix the problem and not doing so, is tantamount to being the murderers ourselves.
I'm an anarchist idealist, but I'm also a realist. I do not propose tossing people in cells or letting dangerous people run free, but a revolution within the legal and penal systems to start caring for people instead of capitalising on socio-economic conditioning. That would be more humane than simply writing people off and flipping a switch while we sit on moral high horses because our socio-economic conditions did not lead us down a murderous path.

george!!!

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:11:38 +0300

george!!!

okay i have to reply now. my real issue is that i don't humans can have a zero-profit/pure-cost system at all. our current system is built on money that doesn't exist, but it's a number that we can use to track things. can an energy economics account for credit? because while fake money is discomforting, it drives progress and allows me to be a total consumer and buy a bunch of hot hot clothes

Fri, 17 May 2013 02:04:00 +0300

ooooh. i’m so tempted to take the bait, but it’s late and i tend to blather on for ages.

it can be used for tracking purposes, but is instead used as a means to divert resources to induce false-scarcity and boost profit margins, thus increasing individual resource hoarding.

by removing profit from the equations used to calculate that number we wanna use for tracking, we allow ourselves to achieve as accurate an accounting of true cost as we are able.

credit, in the contemporary sense, is a redundant and often damaging economic practice. and yet, it predates money. Gift economies made use of social credit in the form of favours that community members did for each other, with the common understanding being that the favour would be repaid. the change to the current understanding likely occurred when one individual went from saying “you owe me” to the quantified statement “you owe me one of something specific”.

money does not drive progress, we progress in spite of money and it’s multitude of limitations in it’s current format. limitations exhibited very clearly by “total consumers” buying a bunch of “hot hot clothes” and thinking it progress… >.<

and money is already subjective. living in new york is more expensive than kansas city. so money has different value in different places, even when it's all the dollar in the same country.

Fri, 17 May 2013 01:23:42 +0300

this is little more than a clear indicator of a lack of localized production as a common standard of economic practice

how do you calculate and understand the true cost of goods? do we have to agree on that calculation? why do you think that money is what dictates cost, instead of perception of value? money is just shorthand for the cost, as far as i can tell.

Fri, 17 May 2013 01:21:49 +0300

if we are attempting to assess cost, then some form of agreed upon currency is required, but since true objective valuation cannot exist that currency would need to be an intrinsic calculable property of any resource being valued. The only logical common denominator then, is Energy. and Energy Economics has been a valid field of inquiry for over a century.

The current methods of cost valuation used by the masses in their daily lives, are estimated opinions. This is also true for the economic regulation methods used by government and the currency valuation in private banking sectors. This means we have a rough idea of what any given resource’s value might be, kinda, sorta, almost… or not, because it’s all subjective right?

Money is not currently shorthand for cost, it is shorthand for cost AND profit. It is synonymous with debt, when it should be a simple tool for facilitating complex resource exchanges.

"the free market relies on the price mechanism to determine and regulate resource value so that..."

Thu, 16 May 2013 17:32:09 +0300

“the free market relies on the price mechanism to determine and regulate resource value so that supply and demand are able to regulate resource distribution.But since the price mechanism requires a degree of scarcity, abundance would cause a free market to collapse because all prices would resolve to zero. The more abundance you get, the more unstable the free market becomes, and so every time you approach Post-Scarcity abundance levels, the free market will threaten to collapse, and those who benefit would need to induce scarcity to prevent market collapse. I can conceive of no way in which a free-market could ever result in a post-scarcity society”

Video

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:12:52 +0300