That was me asking Ele to re-open the thread because, as much as you think that kind of "propaganda" is poor, stupid or whatever, it's not worst than any other political campaign TV spot : using people's emotions to ask questions or serve a purpose. This is the actual politics tools : media & emotions. Except those alarmist campaigns aim to make people think an realize important things, where political campaign TV spots are just about casting their nets wide and "conquer" some votes.
That being said, that thread points toward legit concerns, some of them urgents, and they're all consequences of our worldwide economy, "competitive finances", over-production, over-consumption, creating "needs" and inequalities... and the first few answers show a lot of people need to be educated on those matters, because we're reaching a turning point : our species keep growing dangerously fast and our planet won't be able to put up with our shit for much longer. We'll just wipe ourselves out, on our own like big boïz.
Changes take time, but for changes to happen people actually need to start acting in ways that make those changes possible, and asap. People need to think fresh if they don't want to rott along with the global system which have reached its boundaries, it's dying. We're entering a transitionnal period and it's very confusing for everyone.
Most of the things you listed are either not important, or are simply needed. Like the uranium, oil and pollution.
Also what is the problem with the defense spending? It keeps the hegemony.
What makes you think "keeping the hegemony" is actually a good thing ? Even more when that hegemony is solely used to assure immediat financial interests and force our species onto a destructive path. [EDIT : and "keeping the hegemony" is a highly ressource consuming task]
Pollution is not needed, it's a consequence of over-production/consumption, but over-production/consumption is not something we need ; it's something our financial system needs to keep on rolling, but it's not something we need as biological entities, it's actually something that destroys us, and thousands of other vegetal and animals species along with it. But we live in an eco-system that we are
a part of ; we can't fight it, we can't survive without it, it's a balance that needs to be respected, and we're at the point it's a balance that needs to be
protected.
And most of the things you stated, we just can't simply stop. There is no possible way to stop all starvation. There is just not enough food. Oil and other natural resources are something we need for day to day life.
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Like I said about the starvation. There is simply an over population of people and not enough food for it to go around. Maybe you should be glad you are one of the lucky ones?
As I do agree on the over-population point and strongly believe this is one of our main issues, the "not enough food" point is simply not true. In occident, we waste tones of food everyday, food we produce in a very unefficient and harmful way ; while on the other side of the world huge multinational companies (like Monsanto) actively and succesfuly work to forbid farmers to use and exchange the seeds they recover from their own natural and abundant crops -like we've been doing for thousand years- in order to sell their own seeds, requiring their own chemical products to be cultivated efficiently, and not giving any other seed. Since they started doing that awful shits,
thousands of farmers have been crawling onto debts or commited suicide, in India.
We also have alternative ways to cultivate efficiently, ecologically responsible, and with a crazy high surface/productivity ratio : like
Permacultures for instance. There also are ways to cultivate using drastically less water with a good productivity, like hydroponic cultures for instance.
And yes we should be glad we're among the lucky ones, but we should also be glad to have the time to think about all that shit and we should feel bad about what our civilization is imposing to the majority of the inhabitant of planet Earth.
About oil : we based our entire economy on it, we sure can't stop using it tomorrow, but we seriously need to reduce our energy consumption, and start using oil & the energy it allows us to produce to "liberate" ourselves from our oil dependancy and orient ourselves toward cleaner and renewable energy. And we can, but it goes against the interests of massive actual energy providers and oil companies, and their profit is all they care about.
Before we get there, because I know there's always someone bringing that up when we start touching those matters : it's not about "human nature", there's no human nature. Our only persistent natural trait is adaptability. We're a social species ; our behaviours, ideas, choices, perception of our surrounding, are all forged by the society we live in and our interractions with other human beings. We're having troubles to think about alternative ways to get out of that suicidal system because we grew up and forged our vision of the world with and through it, but it's not a universal truth by any mean. We're not selfish, greedy and destructive by nature, those traits are created and intensified by the actual economical system.
But mark my words : capitalism has had its advantages and days of glory, it bringed its share or technological advances and comfort (even tho nothing proves we wouldn't be at the same exact technological state if we had a different system), but it has reached its limits ; and we need to find ways to free ourselves from it.
I think I forgot some stuffs I wanted to say, but that's a good convo starter imo. I'll probably find those things again as the conversation advances.
Last edited by deprav; Sep 21, 2015 at 12:22 AM.