oh, lonewulf, i'm not saying capitalism is THE answer, just the primary driver (actually, my posts are more about the failures of socialism, rather than the benefit of capitalism, but they're interconnected so the difference is moot).

as a society, our general needs will have to change, i think, in order to prevent resource exhaustion. but we can't be expected to force that change, it will need to be on our own. as noted, racism is slowly going away (it will always exist, but as a fringe, not a norm), women are nearly equal (still a gap), yadda yadda. we will naturally make strides towards plenty of things, but the key, IMO, is the term naturally. these changes as well will be inteconnected with our economic system, so even this difference may be moot. i'm not sure.

thanks for the nod, btw.

taks

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goodbye richard pryor :(...

What a vast subject. Lets see now, I think
healthy youngsters are all for capitalism while
pensioners like some collectivism. Those poor
sods in the middle have to do the work BTW
Left and Right came from a French assembly
a few centuries ago where representives
inclined to collective effort were on the left
of the chamber while the selfish tendency were
on the right!

interesting. of course, the terms liberal and conservative mean vastly different things on either side of the pond...

taks

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goodbye richard pryor :(...

I think we're talking past each other. I believe that technological change is vital for our future, but you can't have that in a sustainable society. If there is technological and cultural change, society will change or eventually be replaced by another. Many societies today are radically different from a century ago, many are gone forever. If a society changes, it isn't sustainable. Please note: This isn't just about resource sustainability, population sustainability, or the standard of living, but what it would take to have a society that could exist long term.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

I'm not exactly young, but that is a separate issue. A largely capitalistic society can have a controlled media and heavy government controls. It isn't quite clear what a society with no net economic growth would look like, but it need not be a socialist state.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Taks, you are right, of course, that forcing it would be devastating and would hardly work. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that we can't work towards a better end goal.

Working slowly towards something is far easier than trying to make a radical change at once. Any "instant change" seems to lead to a far worse end conclusion than a slow, deliberate move.

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"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right." -- Thomas Paine

Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor. -- Heinlein

Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. -- Isaac Asimov

Simplest example why a non-coercive sustainable society will never work.

In a sustainable society energy production must remain constant, or at most fluctuate in a known pattern. If energy production increases with time (or decreases, for that matter), it is not sustainable, at least not by any definition I had seen yet. Obviously, all that produced energy must be consumed, even if not immediately. Over a certain time period energy production and consumption are equal and fixed.

Suppose I invent a new car. Or a new submersible. Or a spaceship. Where am I going to get the energy to fuel it?

If enough people like my invention, someone will come up with a way to get energy for it. But that means either increasing overall energy production -- so society is no longer sustainable, -- or taking energy away from someone else. In the latter case, someone's ox will end up gored, and I (and people who like my invention) stomped on someone else's freedom. The society turns out coercive.

That's why I wrote above that a sustainable society must be static -- new inventions (let alone new ideas!) would upset it all too easily. And a static society which suppresses (or "properly guides") new inventions and ideas has to be VERY oppressive.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

In US. In Europe prejudice against Muslims is rising. Outside the First World racism never went away at all.

And I am willing to bet anything that when cloned and/or genetically engineered humans first appear, prejudice against them will be tremendous.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

Nor did sexism in many places, for that matter. And although racism isn't as huge an issue in the first world as it once was, there are growing movements to supress people that are minorities in other ways besides race. There is also a growing anti-hispanic movement in the US that I have been noticing, so racism is not completely gone in the US.

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I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
-Steven Wright



My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

Yeah, true, racism and sexism didn't really disappear. But it's still becoming less and less acceptable as it was in the past. The "racism" itself is becoming more and more minor across the world - it just takes time. You can't expect racism to disappear overnight.

I say that it shows something that in the First World countries, racism is dying off, but in the Third World, it's alive and strong. I view it as this: When you view the Third World countries, you are, in effect, looking back into the past - into cultures that haven't evolved into these new perceptions quite yet. But it seems that, eventually, they will.

Eventually, sexism will rarely be an issue, and it will never be a "norm" in the main countries.

That's my view, at least. The only way to prove me wrong (or right, for that matter) is to get a time machine, and we're covering that in another thread.

This forum rocks. (for the time travel shtuff, not the fact that it's hard to prove me wrong on this one issue)

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"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right." -- Thomas Paine

Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor. -- Heinlein

Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. -- Isaac Asimov

The problem is that fundamentalist groups that have low opinions of women and actively oppress them are seemingly growing in strength, not waining in strength.

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I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
-Steven Wright



My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

Heh. Or maybe they're just having a lot of media spotlight because they happen to be a threat to the security of our nation. I didn't know much at all about how things in Iraq were, until after 9/11... then I knew more about Iraq than I cared to. Iraq, Iran, the Al Qaeda, etc. etc. etc.

Even then, there are rather backwards beliefs in Africa and such you rarely hear about. But if Africa became a very big threat to our security, I have no doubt that media spotlight would make that "seem" to increase.

But assuming it IS increasing amongst fundamentalist groups - so what?

Well, for one, most fundamentalist groups such as that seem to be filled with extremists. A lot of the people involved are brought up into a Total Institution (the same thing as a cult, or a convent, or the Army boot camp). They took their time training and training these people, and forcing them into one idea, one conformity. You can achieve the same thing with a cult in the US.

However, the SURROUNDING /majority/ opinion seem to be quite different. From what I've seen, most large countries look down on racism - and those that have racism (such as the racism vs. muslims), do so with FAR more of a minor outlook than in the third-world countries.

I just think that this trend will die off sooner or later. One can even say it might fall apart thanks to Herbert Spencer's "Social Darwinism". Also - did you know that a lot of women wearing that ceremonial headpiece do so willingly? (Depends on location - in some areas, it's required and mandated). It's actually considered a fashion style in certain areas - a WILLING fashion style. Though these pictures are often supposed to be showing how sexist all the people in that area are (in some cases, I have to wonder if it's of a woman who wears it willingly or unwillingly).

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"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right." -- Thomas Paine

Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor. -- Heinlein

Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. -- Isaac Asimov

Pardon me, these assertions wouldn´t pass a reality test.

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"Shut up and calculate" R. Feynman

Okay. I'm resisting asking you to prove me wrong, but I made the claim, I suppose I need to prove myself. Ever see the movie "Rosewood"? Or any movie that takes place before 1970 in the South? Now, I hear almost no tales at all of severe racism in the South.

Yes, there is minor racism, but it's NOT as major as it was in the past. Not only that, but it IS becoming less and less "accepted" to be racist. I live in Texas, and racism against Mexicans (which was a big thing a century back!) is almost non-existant here. Heck, the Texas Rangers could NEVER get away with killing Mexicans based on the color of their skin (as they have done before!) - but instead, have african american and mexican participants!

I don't see your "reality test" in these cases.

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"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right." -- Thomas Paine

Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor. -- Heinlein

Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. -- Isaac Asimov

I agree. Where I live even a verbal racist offense can send you to jail (without bail).

Ok, I´ll take your word on it, for now.

To be frank, I can´t remember hearing of a racism episode in a "third world" country. All the examples available refer to Europe, North America and Japan.

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"Shut up and calculate" R. Feynman

I just say that there's a trend. I was recently convinced that racism will never go away completely ("Ignorance never dies", as one friend said), but that doesn't change my perception that racism is starting to die down overall. That's all I'm saying. And then claiming that my assertions wouldn't pass a reality test, and then agreeing with my point... urgh. I don't know whether to feel insulted or what.

You haven't heard of racism in third world countries? I recommend you do some checking around. The most extreme is in Rwanda, where ONE MILLION people were slaughtered in the name of racism.

Of course you'd hear about racism far more often from first world countries. There's the fact that it's "Closer to home" for many of us, instead of "over there". That doesn't mean that the potency is necessarily more.

As well, factor in the fact that you have a LOT of people in First World countries, and many are also immigrants. I'm not claiming that only immigrants are racist, I'm just saying that there's other factors involved. Jon Stewart from The Daily Show put it aptly: "I live in New York City. With 8 million people, there's bound to be a lot of everything".

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"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right." -- Thomas Paine

Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor. -- Heinlein

Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. -- Isaac Asimov

I disagree. That´s not so simple. Those extreme African cases are better understood in the context of the fighting for tribal power. There´s little racism (if any) there.

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"Shut up and calculate" R. Feynman

There's plenty of racism there.

Not only that, but as my sociology textbook explains, racism is a by-product of such things. Tribal warfare, and justifying slavery, are two main reasons for slavery.

Also, HOW exactly is one tribe hating another tribe based entirely on them being in that tribe, and that tribe being based on who they're born to and even how they look, not racism?

Urgh, this is starting to really annoy me now. I might have to give up this discussion merely to keep things civil. Are you, exactly, saying that Third World Countries don't have racism? This seems like a very naive stance to take. VERY naive.

I could go into all sorts of details of Rwanda and how the Dutch took over, and how they chose one group for looking similar to the Dutch, but I won't bother. I'll just get more frustrated. *Sighs*

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"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right." -- Thomas Paine

Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor. -- Heinlein

Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. -- Isaac Asimov

No.

You are right to a certain extent. Every human group tends to feel "superior" to the others. It´s a human trend. Now you just can´t reduce every conflict in the world to some form of racist expression.

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"Shut up and calculate"