Philosophy Now Forum

Need what?

The resources.

Greta wrote: With all due respect, you are rather small as compared with a cosmos that insists - against your express wishes - on coming alive. Is there a time when one becomes pragmatic? We are all resigned to the brutality of nature and we've all probably gone through times where we wished we didn't exist. If I was a person suffering in poverty and deprivation I would not be impressed with wealthy people who still weren't happy. I'd be thinking, "If wealth isn't making you happy I'll take it off your hands!".

As a conscious being, to examine the value of existing along with one's personal circumstances in being a player and coming up negative is also a perfectly valid conclusion. If it weren't for the instinctual programming forcing life forward in ALL creatures what could reason alone assert about the value of life as historically manifested without leveraging into myth for enhancement?

Socrates supposedly said The unexamined life is not worth living. In some sense that may be true but the obverse is equally true; having examined it as instructed, I'm certain there are many who would conclude it is indeed not worth living and have been better off not examining it.

The life instinct as we all know is directly allied with sex. What forces the male and female together are the hormones meant to overcome resistance otherwise we wouldn't like each other as much and sex would be committed to as a duty only to continue the tribe. Again, it's the programming and not reason which forces life forward whatever its circumstances.

Also, the cosmos is not preconditioned by any overt intent to create life which exist more as an epiphenomenon by processes already in play.

...more to say but I have to go out and buy groceries to continue my existence. The refrigerator is near empty!

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

Greta wrote:

Arising_uk wrote:I agree nanotechnology could be the cornucopia machine.

Being able to economically generate food from waste would be a game-changer.

We can already do that. It's called the soil.

Ha! But good soil is becoming ever more scarce while plastics, metals and building rubble are more prevalent. Ideally we'd prevent further ecosystem breakdown but that seems extremely unlikely, akin to turning an ocean liner on a ten cent coin (note: not a dime ).

If the lucky ones are going to stay safe in their "hermetic bubble cities" (some poetic licence) while all hell is going on around them, they will need to be able to generate food (which will need multiple energy sources and contingencies).

Greta wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

Greta wrote: Being able to economically generate food from waste would be a game-changer.

We can already do that. It's called the soil.

Ha! But good soil is becoming ever more scarce while plastics, metals and building rubble are more prevalent. Ideally we'd prevent further ecosystem breakdown but that seems extremely unlikely, akin to turning an ocean liner on a ten cent coin (note: not a dime ).

If the lucky ones are going to stay safe in their "hermetic bubble cities" (some poetic licence) while all hell is going on around them, they will need to be able to generate food (which will need multiple energy sources and contingencies).

Yeah - but keeping your soil is always going to be more effective than trying to invent a machine that does what nature is always going to do better.

And it is amazing how quickly nature can take over. One day we'll wipe out the human race hopefully with a plague and give it all a chance to recover from nature's worst mistake.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

Greta wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:
We can already do that. It's called the soil.

Ha! But good soil is becoming ever more scarce while plastics, metals and building rubble are more prevalent. Ideally we'd prevent further ecosystem breakdown but that seems extremely unlikely, akin to turning an ocean liner on a ten cent coin (note: not a dime ).

If the lucky ones are going to stay safe in their "hermetic bubble cities" (some poetic licence) while all hell is going on around them, they will need to be able to generate food (which will need multiple energy sources and contingencies).

Yeah - but keeping your soil is always going to be more effective than trying to invent a machine that does what nature is always going to do better.

And it is amazing how quickly nature can take over. One day we'll wipe out the human race hopefully with a plague and give it all a chance to recover from nature's worst mistake.

I have a challenge on my hands - to maintain a positive outlook while surrounded by misanthropists. I often find misanthropists pleasant company because their stance usually stems from their objections to dodginess and stupidity. Easy to relate to, especially during the "political conversation" around the primary and general election campaigns.

Fixing the soil is easier up to a point but arable land is reducing. It will help many things if sustenance can be generated from plastics, metals and building rubble.

Bottom line for me is that I've always been an animal lover and, now that I've achieved a safe distance from them in middle age, I have come to see the loveable ape within human beings. We tell ourselves that we have free will, that we are in control, that we know what we're doing, that we are knowing and no longer innocent like the other animals. Yes, but only to a degree and, I suspect, much less than we intuitively think.

We're supernatural beings, looking at nature from the outside, the day we were able to question our existence with over evolved self-awareness. Much further from nature than one would think, but still not as smart as we think. We are a danger to every other species on this planet.

Dalek Prime wrote:We're supernatural beings, looking at nature from the outside, the day we were able to question our existence with over evolved self-awareness. Much further from nature than one would think, but still not as smart as we think. We are a danger to every other species on this planet.

What is the "supernatural" but the unexpected natural? Looking at the rest of nature you wouldn't think that something as alien as "humanity" would evolve. Maybe we underestimate nature? Even today some people believe that other animals have no consciousness, that they are as lacking in subjective experience as a rock. That was the standard accepted view not so long ago, the residual effects seen in the blind callousness of meat industries. Today most educated people would consider such views as out of touch with the obvious reality, not just apparent from behaviour, but demonstrated via neuroscience. It seems to me that every single thing in nature has plenty more going on than we assume. If Neanderthals and whomever were capable of surviving the last ice age there would not be this "distinction".

I see the dog and me as similar brings. She has hearing, smell, energy, fitness, speed, agility and a sweet nature while I have size, upright stance, opposable thumbs, ability to safely navigate the human world we live in, and bossy. However, then compare dogkind with humankind - utterly different. Humanity is a whole new thing again, another unexpected potential of nature.

I think the System, The Machine, the elites, whatever you want to call it is en entity unto itself, with only an interest in itself. As with any new entity, it goes through fast growth stages and is either actually or effectively rapacious and insatiable in its path to growth. There's a Leunig cartoon called "People going about their business" that beautifully captures the relationship between humans and humanity: lots of little people scurrying like ants in the street around a hill-sized black and shadowy jackboot planted threateningly in the middle.

I think we need to distinguish between humans and humanity; they are increasingly different in both nature and interests.

Greta wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

Greta wrote: Ha! But good soil is becoming ever more scarce while plastics, metals and building rubble are more prevalent. Ideally we'd prevent further ecosystem breakdown but that seems extremely unlikely, akin to turning an ocean liner on a ten cent coin (note: not a dime ).

If the lucky ones are going to stay safe in their "hermetic bubble cities" (some poetic licence) while all hell is going on around them, they will need to be able to generate food (which will need multiple energy sources and contingencies).

Yeah - but keeping your soil is always going to be more effective than trying to invent a machine that does what nature is always going to do better.

And it is amazing how quickly nature can take over. One day we'll wipe out the human race hopefully with a plague and give it all a chance to recover from nature's worst mistake.

I have a challenge on my hands - to maintain a positive outlook while surrounded by misanthropists. I often find misanthropists pleasant company because their stance usually stems from their objections to dodginess and stupidity. Easy to relate to, especially during the "political conversation" around the primary and general election campaigns.

Fixing the soil is easier up to a point but arable land is reducing. It will help many things if sustenance can be generated from plastics, metals and building rubble.

Bottom line for me is that I've always been an animal lover and, now that I've achieved a safe distance from them in middle age, I have come to see the loveable ape within human beings. We tell ourselves that we have free will, that we are in control, that we know what we're doing, that we are knowing and no longer innocent like the other animals. Yes, but only to a degree and, I suspect, much less than we intuitively think.

Plastic and metal are high energy fuel, not possible from sustainables. Plastic itself is made from oil products. Right now there is more than enough arable land, and more marginal land for grazing which can provide natural soil products.
Going down the route to making food out of shit is to admit defeat, and is a self defeating process. You still need the space to get the sunlight, and although much can be done under glass there are deeper problems with the way we transport and distribute our food which burns more diminishing fuel resources.
I reached into my fridge yesterday to draw out a small packet of baby corn to see it had come by air from Thailand the other side of the fucking world. This is insane, and has everything to do with economic viability and nothing to do with common sense and sustainability.

Outside my backgate there is a desert as far as the eye can see. Despite having no soil it is four feet high with bold golden mature wheat. How is this possible- utter dependancy on oil based industries providing chemical fertilisers, and pesticides which harm the water we all drink. The desertification has happened in the last 70 years where deep ploughing has disturbed the soil so that during the winter months as all be blown into the sea. After the ice age it took 100s of years for the soil Loess, brought by the wind, to establish itself, and it has gone in less than a life-time. When the oil runs out millions of acres of Southern Downland will be useless, perhaps only rescued if never again ploughed, but allowed to graze.

PS I'n not a misanthropist, and do not appreciate the implied ad hominem. The facts remain despite my views on humanity.

Hobbs, no doubt there are problems with the economic systems. You allude to the powerful vested interests driving some of these production, market and distribution distortions. I assume that whatever is going to happen is going to happen. While I'm optimistic about the long term, I'm highly pessimistic about the short-to-medium term. I'm thinking about when - as is inevitable - the arable land is mostly gone. Seven billion people and rising - the sheer weight of biomass of one species is unsupportable, even despite the waste. All that can be done is slow it, and I've not seen signs of that either.

Sorry about calling you a misanthropist but it's hard to interpret this statement of yours any other way:

One day we'll wipe out the human race hopefully with a plague and give it all a chance to recover from nature's worst mistake.

Misanthrope does not denote merely one thing namely hatred, the meaning most people default to when they hear the word. It also implies mistrust of humans and in that respect for obvious reasons there are more misanthropes out there than can be counted.