Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment

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No, it is technology and values - there was a time when the Japanese were connected to their own forests, and each person had a nice pair of chopsticks that they used for each meal. Industrialism broke half of those connections, and people today go for the cheap, easy, environmentally destructive 'solution'.





Yes, that is good advice - perhaps you can cultivate your dendrites like pine trees.

Are you even japanese? Do you live in Japan? If not, don't follow such an example through to such an absurd point. If so, I'd love to see your rant against kawaii and how its spurred the plastics industry to cataclysmic levels.

What a crock of absurd shite! The fact that I am not Japanese has nothing to do with the fact that clear cutting forests across southeast Asia are an environmental catastrophe. The fact that I don't live in West Virginia doesn't mean that I should not object to mountain top removal and valley filling. You are advocating the alienation of man from nature as an excuse for the wanton destruction of the world. Out of sight, out of mind?



More crockery. First, I am not opposed to ZPG. Second, only a junior high schooler would reduce it to population - environmental impacts are a function of population, affluence, technology and values.

I'm saying you're commenting on a culture when you have no clue what's going on over there. Commenting on what kind of utensils the Japanese keep in their homes is a little different from mountain top removal.



I'm glad you're around to protect the world. You're doing such a great job so far.

And I'm sure you're glad that you're affluent and technologically advanced enough to be able to get online.

So if you want all this changed, how about you propose a real solution? How should we go about things? Personally, I'm a huge fan of switching the infrastructure over to all-electric but there's still some technological hiccups in the way, rather less the fact that such an infrastructure overhaul would take a decade or two for this country.

The two things that have destroyed Environment are - Overpopulation and Overconsumerism.

Science and Technology is responsible for both these problems. World population was less than 1 billion in the year 1800. Nature had its way of controlling population through disease and death caused by bacteria and virus. When man made medicines/ antibiotics he created disaster - population increased very rapidly. In the absence of "Industrial Agriculture" the feeding capacity of soil would have kept population under control. If Industrial Revolution had not happened, environmental destruction due to production of consumer goods would not exist.

In the absence of Science, Technology and "Industrial Revolution" we would not be facing the two problems that have caused destruction of ecosystems - overpopulation and overconsumerism.



A lot of efforts have been made to control/ reduce population. There is one child policy in China. Most families in urban India are now having one/ two children. Other countries have also tried to check population growth. In the absence of these efforts world population would be much greater than 6.5 billion today.

An equivalent example does not exist for Overconsumerism.

The world has not made efforts to reduce consumerism.

All countries have been increasing Growth Rate, Economy Rate and GDP in the last 50 years. The number of consumer goods in most homes has been increasing over the last 50 years.


sushil_yadav
PowerSwitch
EnviroLink
Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment

Overpopulation seems to be the biggest problem.

Eliminating consumerism and destroying industrial/scientific ways of thinking would probably also take down overpopulation. Nature can finally take it's course as the point of humanity isn't to save everyone anymore and "survival of the fittest" takes effect again.

However, I would like to ponder the possible outcomes of reducing the population significantly to the point of maybe 1 million people on earth max, but still keeping industrial and scientific views, and assuming that breeding would be forcibly kept to a minimum.

Let's make them all intelligent people who are experts in their fields as well so we can actually continue to make progress in these fields.

Getting rid of the bulk of 6 billion people would surely guarantee that the most vicious people would survive - if that's your concept of an ideal world.

How so? Why are disposable chopsticks any different from disposable spoons and forks, or mountains of plastic from bottled water? Should we avoid criticizing the big car culture of the US, since no critic could possibly understand the lust for chrome and torque or the love of the open road? Why do you think that clear cutting tropical rainforest (very high biodiversity) is less important than mountain top removal?



Thank you. There are lots of sarcastic a$$holes out there that I have to deal with, and your warm support is welcome. I have done a few things in my neighborhood that resulted in the preservation of a population of endangered species (and eventually cost me my job at that time). In 1997, I used my own time to do an energy audit of the company I worked for, and that resulted in about $40,000 in reduced electrical bills each year. My dissertation involved developing new algorithms for detecting change in time series of remotely sensed data - some of these methods are now being used to identify particular patterns of change on the Earth's surface. I don't imagine I can 'save the world, but I do believe that humans can make a big difference in their impacts, and that if a large enough group of people acted in that way, it would make a huge difference.




There are lots of partial solutions, some big, some small. GTG, later.

Last edited by monty on 24 Jul 2009, 7:57 am, edited 1 time in total.

If we are literally destroying all industrial and scientific ways of thinking and culture, and reverting back to pre-civilization, then yes, only the most vicious would survive. If we eliminate a majority of people it wouldn't be by any natural means, so it's probably out of the question. I was just thinking about what would happen if the human population never reached over a couple million, but we still made the progress we made in modern society.

The really clever and capable people are a very small minority of the species. With around a million people, even under the most ideal conditions, human progress would never have gotten to where it is. One million people is simply insufficient.

Well, without the technological society I'd be dead already (insulin-dependent). So I'm willing to go along with the crowd.

Anyway, after murdering a trillion or so people it might be harder to sleep.

You won't get dysentery if you boil the water before you drink it. Filtering it through cloth ( which has itself been boiled and left in the sun) will remove the parasites. Why didn't people do this in preindustrial times? If you don't know about microorganims you won't see a point in doing all those extra steps. But they will prevent dysentery. Dysentery runs through refugee camps now when the need for drinking water for thousands far outstrips the available fuel for boiling.

That's true, but is it applicable? We already have a rather large population, can't undo that quickly and humanely ... is the solution to the population issue a lot more people, some of whom will be clever enough to find a solution? IMO, the big problems come not from the lack of cleverness, but from a lack of wisdom in applying cleverness.

I remember talking to a student from a third world country that had some oil and a rapid rate of population growth. His view was that they needed more scientists, doctors, engineers, etc, and that growing the population was the only way to achieve that. I asked him if it might not be better to invest in education and expand the universities and medical schools, with a goal to improve quality. He didn't see that as an option.

They did in China and much of Asia, where tea was the beverage of choice.

Also, there are more than a few plants that can treat various forms of dysentery, and people do develop resistance to many such diseases over time.

Woops. Good point. I forgot about tea.

Very soon science is going to announce the gene for environmental destruction.

Humans are not responsible for environmental destruction - it is the gene.

Humans are not responsible for anything - the genes are responsible for everything.

It is the gene which is responsible for obesity.

It is the gene which is responsible for cancer.

It is the gene which is responsible for violence/ aggression.

It is the gene which is responsible for mental suffering.


When it comes to Olympic medal they will give it to a person - not to the gene.

When it comes to Nobel Prize they will give it to a person - not to the gene.

When it comes to rewarding work they will pay million dollar salary to the CEO - not to the gene.

When it comes to "Theory of Relativity" they will give credit to Einstein - not to the gene.



On earth we have got oceans and oceans of water - which have been polluted/ poisoned by man - but this is hardly news for humans.

Recently Man bombarded the moon with a rocket to discover traces of water - and it became the newspaper headline across the world.

They call it progress, growth, development.

Height of insanity - Height of abnormality.

Don't search for a few molecules of water in outer space.

Take care of the water that is available on earth.


sushil_yadav
Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment