Overpopulation, books, and the environment

[bumblemusprime]

Just finished reading Collapse by Jared Diamond and The World Without Us by some bloke whose name escapes me. I put down three other books that I was reading at once and plowed through these two. I haven't been so affected by a pair of books in a while.

The initial idea of World Without Us didn't sound interesting to me: it was a cool thought experiment to talk about what would happen to the world if humans totally disappeared. But the book is about a lot more than that; it's a thorough environmental treatise of how we've ****** the planet and how it might recover.

The most affecting part of World Without Us was the one I had read before, which was about the trash collecting in the North Pacific Gyre, a dead low zone between all the currents circling the coasts of Alaska, Russia, Japan, Hawaii and the western coast of North America. Trash. Trash like crazy. Lots of little plastic bottles and plastic wrap and plastic bags and worst of all, little bits of plastic that have been ground up that little sea creatures are eating. Funny enough, the ending is kind of hopeful—a thought that if people vanished, plastic would end up as just another layer in the Earth’s crust and probably get squished into something else.

Collapse is about various societies, both ancient and modern, that have collapsed and totally stopped working. In almost every circumstance it is because they overestimated how much damage their environment could take. On Easter Island, for example, the island was deforested faster than other Polynesian islands and basically made into desert because the inhabitants didn’t realize how the thin, dry soil wouldn’t regrow trees and how badly it would be affected by erosion. Crops were then affected. And they ate people out of lack of food. Common insult during the lean years: “your mother’s flesh sticks between my teeth.” Not kidding.

Most of these societies were done in by their own prosperity. The Maya collapsed because they started farming the hillsides above the valleys where they were originally farming. The hillsides eroded; the soil washed down into the valley below. The Maya were just too populous; hence the need for higher farms.

Somewhat repulsively to us, a lot of societies maintained a better population balance through infanticide and late-term forced abortion. However, Diamond points out that in our world, with birth control a-plenty, there is no reason why people couldn't restrict their baby-having without these gruesome methods.

Diamond actually lauds a lot of businesses and business conglomerates for practicing an ounce of prevention rather than a pound of cure. He talks about visiting the Chevron plant in New Guinea in which the environment was more pristine than most of Papua New Guinea's national parks because of the many, many cautions taken around the drilling. Diamond has no easy solution but he is pretty clear that people can use natural resources without raping the land, they just often don’t want to. Mining companies, for example, have a bad environmental record because there is so little responsibility. I don’t know where the metal in this computer came from, but ChevronBP mines the oil and then sells me the gas.

I could go on about these books forever, but I think I will hold off except to say that there really are no easy answers in this. However, overpopulation is still the big factor. All of which lead to some worrisome reading. What kind of world am I giving Adia? Now that I’m reading Collapse, it’s pretty clear that my grandparents and parents had no idea what they were doing to the environment. As far as my grandparents were concerned, there was tons of room to dump trash in the south end of Utah Valley, and why would there one day be so many people that they would build shopping centers and houses on what used to be landfills there? It works on such a personal level. We want about three kids. My grandparents had eight kids because there was lots of room. All things considered, we are maintaining the same population growth with our three that they did with their eight. F*CK.

Thing is, one reason I want kids is because "I've been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding." We live in an urban environment, walk almost everywhere, work mostly from home, compost and recycle. My conservative sister does none of those things, has four kids and is thinking about more.

Here's a solution: everyone who gives a sh*t about the environment and is worried about overpopulation, go out and adopt a kid from some orphanage in Eastern Europe or China.

Oh wait, that's really ******* expensive.

And you can have babies at home for free.

[saysadie]

I'm actually considering adoption in the future.

Just don't tell my boyfriend that, it's a surprise.

Just kidding. I figure if we don't decide to have one of our own by the time I'm too old to have one of my own (and assuming the BF doesn't still almost completely hate kids by then, or finally realises that I'm going to keep nagging till one of us dies or we break up) I'll adopt.

But yeah, people are arrogant, selfish and stupid. I live in the heart of stupidity apparently- large families and dirty oil. Whoohoo.

[bumblemusprime]

I do believe that the wise people of the world have a responsibility to reproduce and not give the future to the crazy baby-making conservatives. Sorry, crazy baby-making conservatives. But the numbers scare me. Every problem we have in the world could be fixed with Less People.

[Yaya]

I could go on about these books forever, but I think I will hold off except to say that there really are no easy answers in this. However, overpopulation is still the big factor. All of which lead to some worrisome reading. What kind of world am I giving Adia?

There are bigger worries, my friend, than whether or not the Earth will sustain future generations.

What kind of world are you giving Adia? You are giving her a world where human beings have lost the concept of accountability, and as a result, a world where people will only look out only for themselves. A world where one's word means very little, where there is no trust between people, where they look to feed off of each other, and take advantage of each others misfortunes. A world where everyone has their own individual concept of right and wrong by which they live, resulting in internal societal strife and conflict as one human being tries to impose their beliefs on the other. A world where the concept of family becomes more and more nebulous with each passing day. A world where instant gratification becomes the driving force behind one's actions. A world that looks to technology to solve ills that have no techinal foundation, but are rather induced by ethical and moral depravity. A world where every person becomes their own living god to whom they solely answer.

These are the threats to future generations, IMO. Not the collapse of the ecosphere. In history, these are the driving forces behind the destruction of man. Greed. Avarice. Mistrust. Dishonesty. Unaccountability.


And in my short life span, here in the US, I have seen the trend towards these very things. It is for this reason I am thankful I don't have children of my own.

[Metal Vendetta]

Allan Weisman's The World Without Us should be be compulsory reading for everyone on the ****ing planet. I'll never look at cats the same way, for example. Bprime, you're right and I totally appreciate your dilemma regard whether to have or not have children. I think I've fallen on the other side tbh, I really don't think I have it in me to reproduce, at least intentionally.

Yaya, I hate to bite, but it's been ages since I did this, and I really miss taking you apart a piece at a time. Way to miss the entire point of the post, the argument, and life.

You are giving her a world where human beings have lost the concept of accountability, and as a result, a world where people will only look out only for themselves.

Aha, a veiled reference to atheism. Well, it's early days yet.

Before I go on, I need to explain myself somewhat, and I don't mean to brag, but it's fairly obvious that I haven't been around this board much lately and the reason I haven't been here is that I've been helping to organise a global conference for (we hope) the future leaders of this world. Seriously, there are a team of five people who organise this thing, and I am one of them. Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BE-yG643-E - this is what I do now. Actually I do that in the afternoons, in the mornings I work for the Royal Society of Medicine, but that's a different matter, the point is that ultimately my paymaster who keeps me in bread and butter is one of the largest advertising agencies in Europe, if not globally. Take a look at some of these logos - http://www.oneyoungworld.com/sponsors/ - we have convinced them to part with their money and pay for delegates (25 years or younger) from 107 countries to meet in London.

When we started there was a single One Young World facebook group. Now there are hundreds. Our Arab network has admitted Israel as a member because they have more in common with each other than they don't. I saw the Palestinian delegate and the Israeli delegate share a stage, a discussion and a hug. I saw a muslim girl speak and we weren't allowed to take pictures of her - she is under constant death threats from her own people for daring to suggest women have rights. In the past six months I have talked people from almost every corner of the world and I have not found people who have lost accountability - I've found people who are concerned about the environment, about conflict between religions, about the power of the media and the fact that their leaders aren't listening to them.

So, yeah, I might have a somewhat biased view of the world, but I really don't see where you're coming from. If anything, would say that the world is far more accountable than it's ever been - every indiscretion is broadcast around the globe in seconds. If you live in the west, your every move is filmed, recorded and monitored. Your internet records will be magnetised into hard disks like ****ing fossils for future civilisations to find and ponder upon. I've been accountable my entire life, we all are. It's not like I can say "I didn't do it" because I did, it's right there in the ****ing log files. We've seen world leaders held accountable for their actions, hell, there's talk of arresting the pope if he comes to Britain. How's that for accountable?

A world where one's word means very little, where there is no trust between people, where they look to feed off of each other, and take advantage of each others misfortunes.

Sorry, but was there ever a world where this kind of thing didn't happen? When was everything nice and rosy, everyone trusted each other, their word was their bond and they didn't take advantage of each other? Can you actually point me to that chapter in the history book, because when I read it at school I never got to that part, I read about a whole ****load of wars and torture and people killing each other because they didn't believe in the right sky god and rape and pillage and then a ****load more wars and people ****ing each over in the most unimaginable ways and I look at myself typing this out on my laptop and I think "Man, I wish I lived in those times when a minor infection would kill you." I'm not saying there's not a whole lot wrong with the world - sure there is, but we do have it a whole lot better than at any other point in history right now. You seem to keep harking back to some golden age when there were flowers and kittens and everyone was nice but it never existed. People do bad things. People have always done bad things. Get over it.

A world where everyone has their own individual concept of right and wrong by which they live, resulting in internal societal strife and conflict as one human being tries to impose their beliefs on the other.

Ah, a more direct reference to atheism. I was hoping that I could save this for the end, but hopefully you'll have dropped some other godawful clanger by then.

Right. I'm an atheist and I don't believe in a God. I have no fear of divine retribution and I'm "accountable" to myself, so I organised an international plenary session on interfaith dialogue and I did it gladly because it's becoming more and more clear to me that we need to get the moderates talking to each other in order to create some sort of global harmony. What have you done lately besides bitch on the internet that people differ from your personal concept of sharia? Or post terrible, terrible reviews of Transformers comics?

A world where the concept of family becomes more and more nebulous with each passing day.

Oh, **** me, the family. Shut the **** up about the family. If the people who are around you care about you it doesn't matter if they're family or not. If the people around you don't care for you, you'd be better off without them, especially if they're family. Why have you got such a hardon for this idea of "family"? Are you ****ing twelve or something? Grow the **** up.

A world where instant gratification becomes the driving force behind one's actions.

You're so vague, I don't know what the **** you're even talking about any more. What are you talking about here, drugs? Prostitutes? Booze? People having sex? Video games? Those kids on your front lawn? Is this a reference I'm not getting from Neuromancer or something?

A world that looks to technology to solve ills that have no techinal foundation, but are rather induced by ethical and moral depravity.

This bit sounds like the back cover quote to an airport sci-fi novel. bprime, you should steal this and use it as the high concept behind a dystopian murder mystery.

A world where every person becomes their own living god to whom they solely answer.

Aw, what? Atheists again? Atheists don't act like gods, they don't believe in them. We act like people. You, on the other hand, are acting like the spoilt kid in the playground. "Sin! Depravity! GODLESSNESS!"

I get by just fine with godlessness. Just how well, exactly do you think you'd get by without an ecosphere? Why are you even trying to hijack a thread about the very real threat of overpopulation with this vague religious claptrap anyway? Are you really so insecure you see depravity everywhere? Just what is your problem with reality? You come across as if you were raised in a fairytale alternate universe where everything was pure and virginal and then suddenly you were dropped into our world where everything's not perfect any more. The US you grew up in is pretty much the same the US you live in now, it's just that you think it's important now.

So please, shut the **** up about greeed, avarice, and all that other bollocks as if you were the first religious nutter to discover them. They're that old they're written about in the goddamn ****ing Bible, they've been with us ever since and in their presence people have positively flourished all over the ****ing world. You think dishonesty is a new thing? People have been lying to each other since they were people, ****, animals lie to each other. It's a natural function of what makes us people.

Bumblemusprime's raised a genuine discussion about real issues and you have to drag it down to the level of your own private fantasy world; I think you may be genuinely mentally deficient*; it's possible that you lack some part of your mind that allows you to see things in terms of one plus one equals two and only allows you to think "spastic noise" plus "spastic noise" equals "full blown spack attack". Either that you're the most persistent and obnoxious troll ever to post the most half-formed cretinous crap he could think of to get a rise out of people that I've encountered on my travels across the internet - most trolls I know do it for lulz, you seem to be doing it because you're a thoroughly miserable person. With terrible taste in comics.

Phew, that was cathartic.

*I know I am for responding to this

[IronHide]

Couple of things..

Yaya, way to be a Debbie Downer. WaaWaaWaaaaaa....


MV, that wasnt a bite, that was a clamp down and rip. That being said, I tend to agree. The world isnt one giant cesspool of depravity and horror, so stop the b*tchin. In fact, Ive been watching proof of that on Discovery (as narrated by Oprah). Granted, we may be living on a very short meter, but hell, does that mean we shouldnt make the most of it? I'd rather have the experience of bringing a life into the world then just sitting by idly for the end of days.


Bprime. Do you even own a tv?

[Yaya]

MV, you're completely out of ******* line here.

Disagree with me if you like, but to take a single paragraph of what I see happening to America, phrased in a very generic and impersonal fashion, and respond to it with the very pointed, specific, personal vehemence you display speaks volumes about your holier-than-thou, know-it-all attitude towards persons with whom you differ. Hardly a One Young World approach, now, is it?

What's the source of this?

I don't mean to brag, but it's fairly obvious that I haven't been around this board much lately and the reason I haven't been here is that I've been helping to organise a global conference for (we hope) the future leaders of this world. Seriously, there are a team of five people who organise this thing, and I am one of them. Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BE-yG643-E - this is what I do now. Actually I do that in the afternoons, in the mornings I work for the Royal Society of Medicine, but that's a different matter, the point is that ultimately my paymaster who keeps me in bread and butter is one of the largest advertising agencies in Europe, if not globally. Take a look at some of these logos - http://www.oneyoungworld.com/sponsors/ - we have convinced them to part with their money and pay for delegates (25 years or younger) from 107 countries to meet in London.

Am I supposed to believe that your achievements and experience somehow give you a more accurate perspective on reality than would mine? For one thing, you are likely close to myself in age. There are things in life, no matter what level of education you might possess, that come only with experience and the passage of time. I am blessed with a profession that lends itself to gaining insight into the past by listening to the wisdom of past generations and the elderly. You can't know where you are unless you know where you've been. And that is the basis for my rationale, the words and wisdom of generations that came before and have become a fainter whisper with the passage of time.

To disregard the importance of the concept of family, and it's role in development of the individual, and society as a whole, tells me you really don't have the grasp of things that you think your experience might lend you. It's a fools hope, it really is, to think individuals can make it in the world without proper nurturing. It's a ******* biological fact! Where do you find argument with me in that?

My sister is a child pyschologist who works with school grade kids. It absolutely, positively blows my ******* mind, the things they are going through, the things they say, the way they think. If you only knew that aspect, you wouldn't be so quick to become the ******* judgmental prick you acted like in your last post. To see children without hope, lost without parental guidance, it really saddens me. It really does. Maybe that's the source of my negativity. That parents have come to prefer themselves to their offspring. That's the very type of selfishness of which I speak, this total disregard for the responsibility of raising the one's who you bring into this world.

Some things, MV, you don't get from a ******* meeting of the minds, irrespective of their level of intellect and position. A world stage is not a reality stage.

You think your contributions to making this world a better place give you the green light to discard others views a irrelevent and meaningless? You are bragging, son. How does your position give you perfect incite into the trends of American society? [composite word including 'f*ck'] man, you are half a world away. You think just because you get some representatives on a stage to shake hands, meet Koffi Annan, agree on making this world a better place,and find and Arab and an Israeli and have them shake hands, that it truly amounts to squat in reality here in America? ********.

I'm from America, and I speak as an American about America, where it was and what it's become, because that's what I see and that's what I know. I've been alive for almost forty years, and in that time, I have not witnessed this nation becoming a better place. People are not happier than they were ten, twenty years ago. People do not trust each other more. Explain this to me then, if you speak the truth? Are these things not a measure of society? Is the child dropout rate not a measure of society? Is the fact that 95% of the nations wealth residing in 5% of the nations people not a measure of society? Is the fact that half a nation frets over giving the poor health insurance they didn't have before a measure of society?

Get a grip, man, and get your head out of the clouds, and recognize that maybe the world you know is a bit different from others.

When we started there was a single One Young World facebook group. Now there are hundreds. Our Arab network has admitted Israel as a member because they have more in common with each other than they don't. I saw the Palestinian delegate and the Israeli delegate share a stage, a discussion and a hug. I saw a muslim girl speak and we weren't allowed to take pictures of her - she is under constant death threats from her own people for daring to suggest women have rights. In the past six months I have talked people from almost every corner of the world and I have not found people who have lost accountability - I've found people who are concerned about the environment, about conflict between religions, about the power of the media and the fact that their leaders aren't listening to them.

I can find those people too. But in the end, society moves with the prevailing majority. There will always, always be good and bad elements. It's more about the balance. Why is this fact, which is obvious to me, lost on you? Explain to me, with your all-encompassing incite into prevailing American societal trends, why six year olds are shooting up schools? I mean, I find this rather disturbing, and don't share your enthusiasm, displaced as it is. You might say something like, "yeah, but most kids aren't doing that", but a trend is a trend. When an Arab and Israel shake hands, it sure gives us all a warm, fuzzy feeling inside, doesn't it? But does that represent reality? Hell no.

I'm starting to think your association with such a noble cause has blinded you to the reality that happens in a day to day world. I applaud your efforts, I really do, and I hope you continue trucking along. But you and I have a long way to go in making our generation better off then the previous one. And that has little to do with enviroment, I'll tell you that.

It's hard for me to type this, because you sound like you make an effort for the greater good, and you certainly have a more hopeful perspective on where we're headed, in a worldly sense. But again, not everyone shares your positive outlook. I certainly don't. Maybe I need more of what you have. In truth, nobody but God Almighty can get a handle on the true position mankind finds themselves in. It's too complex, too big.

I can only go by what I've seen the past 25 years I've been alive. And for the next generation, it doesn't look so hot. Again, that's just how I see it for the little ones. And it saddens me. Am I right? Am I wrong? God only knows.

And just for the record, I don't discount our threat to our planet. I believe it is very real, and am not one of the people to deny that efforts have to be made in reversing this destructive trend. My point is, in the final accounting, there are bigger, more insidious fish to fry that don't get nearly the attention they should, starting with the nurturing of our youth and addressing the challenges they face. And it was Bumblebeemus' comment about his concern for his child that stirred these feelings up in me, not a distaste for the enviroment. I have nephews, whom I love dearly, and I worry about their future, what they will have to deal with. Maybe it's unfounded, but as I say, I see where I was as a child, how I thought, and what's coming up for them. I use my youth and upbringing as the natural measuring stick.

I apologize to Bumblebeemus for the overly dour, oppressively negative comments I made, and I really hope that the America for Adia is not what I envision. My feelings really don't stem from any concern for myself, but the next generation. I want them to live in a country where people extend a hand to each other, and don't feel they need to step on the backs of the person in front of them to get what they want.

Bumblemusprime's raised a genuine discussion about real issues and you have to drag it down to the level of your own private fantasy world; I think you may be genuinely mentally deficient*; it's possible that you lack some part of your mind that allows you to see things in terms of one plus one equals two and only allows you to think "spastic noise" plus "spastic noise" equals "full blown spack attack". Either that you're the most persistent and obnoxious troll ever to post the most half-formed cretinous crap he could think of to get a rise out of people that I've encountered on my travels across the internet - most trolls I know do it for lulz, you seem to be doing it because you're a thoroughly miserable person. With terrible taste in comics.

Phew, that was cathartic.

No, MV, it was dirty. Not that you need my respect, or even want it, but I think with this last bit, I lost all for you.

You talk the talk, but with such a sour display of debate etiquette, you come off as quite juvenile, really. To think that we have in position to solve the world's problems up-and-coming young people as vicious in their demeanor as you, lashing out at others who don't share their point of view, well, it only adds to my worry.

There is a way to disagree in a civil fashion too. Thought you might have learned that on your world circuit. What would dear Kofi say?

One Young World is the premier global forum for young people of leadership calibre. It manifests the reality of common humanity and the shared existence of all the peoples in one world. Its purpose is to connect and bring together the youngest, brightest and best and to ensure that their concerns, opinions and solutions are heard and taken into account by those in power, whether in government, business or any other sector.

Leadership calibre? Impressive. I'm beginning to understand the source of your bravado. Reality of common humanity? So noble. And yet your stance in this thread has been anything but.

I'm guilty of derailing a thread (that, let's face it, wasn't getting many hits) and perhaps being overly pessimistic.

You sir, are guilty of simply being an ass.

One Juvenile World. Indeed.

[Yaya]

. In fact, Ive been watching proof of that on Discovery (as narrated by Oprah).

Love this! Absolutely amazing. And therapeutic.

[saysadie]

I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

[snip] No point in arguing, eh? Still love that smell, though.

[bumblemusprime]

Is this the same Discover that offered a program (programme for all the Brits) to Sarah Palin?

Bprime. Do you even own a tv?

Don't get cable.

Saving my thoughts on Yaya and Rob here for a date when I don't have papers to grade. However, on the subject of overpopulation... anyone?

I think it's more about cleaning up the messes of past generations (there have been many) and hopeully leaving less of a mess for whoever follows along behind us.

Zactly--that's my point, and my worry that our collective inability to consider every single consequence of our actions, even the most outlandish ones (cars and big farms making the earth's overall temperature warmer, for an example) will get us with the same **** consequences that our grandparents have left us.

[saysadie]

I really need to pick up those books. They sound like an interesting read.

I have a few relative thoughts on overpopulation, however they're more resigned than anything- knowing that no one is ever going to be able to go "Hey you, idiot, stop making babies!" kind of makes me wonder if there's anything that can be done about it.

[Metal Vendetta]

MV, you're completely out of ******* line here.

I'm so glad you managed to muster up the indignation to reply, 'cause now I get to own you all over again

First off let me apologise for comparing you to the spoilt kid in the playground, because that's a bit unfair on kids who don't know any better. You're more like the crazy preacher in the town square with the megaphone, shouting at passers-by to repent before it's too late. It's like you're channelling Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly or something. Anyway, onto what you posted.

Disagree with me if you like, but to take a single paragraph of what I see happening to America

Oh sorry, when you said:

What kind of world are you giving Adia?

giving her a world

as a result, a world

A world

A world

A world

A world

A world

A world where every person becomes their own living god to whom they solely answer.

I didn't realise you were referring to America, I thought you were talking about, you know, the world. Is that because you actually think America *is* the world? Or are you just incapable of seeing beyond your own borders? You do know there are other countries out there beside the US, right?

Or is this just another one of your classic bull**** moving-the-goalposts tactics? Never mind, let's endure...

phrased in a very generic and impersonal fashion

Here I call pure, unadulterated, straight-from-the-horse's-ass, bull****. You made it as personal as you possibly could, naming an individual's daughter on the same site where he had to change his user-id because of threats, and addressing the whole diatribe to him as a guilt trip over having children in the first place. I didn't want to step in and fight bprime's battles for him because that's his perogative, but since you brought it up you didn't make a god-mother****ing-damn SINGLE POINT in a "very generic and impersonal fashion" - you started preaching, and like most preachers your words were full of empty hyperbole and hot air. I caught you out on it and I owned you for it. Now you haven't even got the good grace to stand up and admit it? Please explain to me in simple English, how your little rant up there was in any way "generic" or "impersonal". Do you even comprehend what these words mean or do you really think that everyone who posts on this board has a daughter called Adia?

Am I supposed to believe that your achievements and experience somehow give you a more accurate perspective on reality than would mine?

Yes. Quite simply, in scientific terms, if you take a greater amount of sample data from a wider range of sources, then your results will be more accurate. I've seen more of humanity than you have and I've been to more countries than you have. I have a better understanding of the world than you have. You want to talk about lawlessness and broken-down societies? I've been to ****ing Afghanistan, mate. So until you provide me with some credentials other than "armchair republican", I'll continue to assume that I know more than you do.

For one thing, you are likely close to myself in age. There are things in life, no matter what level of education you might possess, that come only with experience and the passage of time.

Yep, and I've tried to do as much with my 31 years as humanly possible. I ask again, what have you done that's so ****ing great? Sure, you can pick holes in everything I tell you I've done, but at the end of the day I'd rather have my resume than yours. Please enlighten me as to how you have gained these incredible insights.

I am blessed with a profession that lends itself to gaining insight into the past by listening to the wisdom of past generations and the elderly.

You mean you fit glasses to old folk and listen to them rant on about how "...kids don't show no respect these days, look at them with their pants hanging halfway down their asses, in my day..."? I mean, really? That's the best you've got? Every generation talks like that about each succeeding generation, that's basic human nature - people are frightened of change, yet the human race is still here and flourishing. ****, if I'd known I was going to be arguing against the received wisdom of old grandpa Joe then I'd have brought along my large-print copy of Logic for Dummies.

You can't know where you are unless you know where you've been. And that is the basis for my rationale, the words and wisdom of generations that came before and have become a fainter whisper with the passage of time.

Ahahahaha! Awesome. I'm assuming none of these old folks know how to write, then, or post their views online. No, they have to distill their wisdom through faint whispers to Shaman Yaya, he who they call "Talks-with-Grannies". I also resent this idea you seem to have that none of the rest of us are capable of listening to what older generations have to say.

To disregard the importance of the concept of family, and it's role in development of the individual, and society as a whole, tells me you really don't have the grasp of things that you think your experience might lend you. It's a fools hope, it really is, to think individuals can make it in the world without proper nurturing. It's a ******* biological fact! Where do you find argument with me in that?

Oh Jesus-Sweet-Monkey-Christ riding a unicorn, again with the goddamn family! Look, I'm neither "pro-family" nor am I "anti-family", I'm just realistic enough to look at this world and say: "This family thing, it seems to work for some people, not so much for others." It's their choice; who made you the ultimate moral arbiter of how people should and shouldn't live? Should I tell my friends from single-parent families that they should just pack it in now because it's a "biological fact" that they didn't receive enough nurturing and they'll never make it in the world? What about my friend who was raised in a free love cult with no family structure at all? Should he give up his $1m business in Japan and slit his wrists because some Yoyo on the internet can't see beyond his boner for "traditional gender roles"?

And it's not a "******* biological fact", it's a construct of society. The concept of childhood didn't even exist until the late nineteenth century - in those days they beat children with sticks and made them work cleaning out chimneys. While we're listening to the "faint whisper" of "the words and wisdom of generations that came before", let's go back to that, shall we? Or how about the "perfect family" that was the major unit of society in ancient Greece, where boys were expected to fellate their father and his friends? Is that the sort of family you want to encourage?

Again, you've got such a raging stonk-on for the perfect concept of family, you don't seem to have noticed that it doesn't exist and never has, except perhaps in your imagination. Please point me to this period in history where everyone lived in perfect family units, everyone followed their "traditional gender roles" and no-one cheated on their partners or abused their children, because I must have been away from school that day.

My sister is a child pyschologist who works with school grade kids. It absolutely, positively blows my ******* mind, the things they are going through, the things they say, the way they think. If you only knew that aspect, you wouldn't be so quick to become the ******* judgmental prick you acted like in your last post. To see children without hope, lost without parental guidance, it really saddens me. It really does. Maybe that's the source of my negativity. That parents have come to prefer themselves to their offspring. That's the very type of selfishness of which I speak, this total disregard for the responsibility of raising the one's who you bring into this world.

And my mother has worked as the headteacher of a nursery school (ages 2-4) on the edge of one of the most deprived sink estates in the Midlands for the past twenty years. I've seen these kids, they come from terrible homes and in some cases their parents don't care about them, but given the right education and care at school, they've gone on to do well for themselves, some of them even returning to the nursery school and working to help the next generation make the most of themselves. And yet the worst examples I've heard (and I've had to listen, often in excruciating detail) from that place are not about the children of the smackheads and prostitutes (though they can be pretty bad), it's when the religious man of the house believes it's his right to treat his wife and kids any way he pleases, because god made him a man and he must play that "gender role". I'd rather be the child of an absent father than one who felt it was his divine duty to beat god's laws into me. That's to say nothing of how these men treat their wives, who are kept like slaves. Like I said before, sometimes a "regular" family is the worst thing that can happen to someone.

You think your contributions to making this world a better place give you the green light to discard others views a irrelevent and meaningless?

Not everyone's, mostly just yours.

You are bragging, son.

Maybe I am - after all, I knew it was going to look that way but I went ahead and posted it anyway, with a caveat at the beginning. Sue me.

How does your position give you perfect incite into the trends of American society? **** man, you are half a world away. You think just because you get some representatives on a stage to shake hands, meet Koffi Annan, agree on making this world a better place,and find and Arab and an Israeli and have them shake hands, that it truly amounts to squat in reality here in America? ********.

Ah, we're back to talking about America. Well, I worked in the States for a couple of months, I've visited a few times, I have a bunch of friends in the US I talk to regularly as well as Septic ex-pats over here, my no-godson is as a 'Merkin and my girlfriend (if we're talking about "America" rather than "the US") is Canadian. I like to think I know what the **** I'm talking about, if only in general terms. How's your "incite" into societies outside the United States?

I'm from America, and I speak as an American about America, where it was and what it's become, because that's what I see and that's what I know.

Then what are you doing spouting your mealy-mouthed, half-witted opinions in a thread about global overpopulation, as you've just admitted you know Jack **** about it? Why are you trying to drag bprime's topic down to your level instead of leaving it to the grown-ups?

I've been alive for almost forty years, and in that time, I have not witnessed this nation becoming a better place. People are not happier than they were ten, twenty years ago. People do not trust each other more. Explain this to me then, if you speak the truth? Are these things not a measure of society?

Hm, let's look at the statistics for that period, shall we?
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
If you look at the figures for the United States Crime Index Rates Per 100,000 Inhabitants (scroll down a bit) you'll see that crime rates rose in the late seventies and through the eighties but in the past ten years they have fallen - if you believe what they say in Freakonomics this can be directly attributed to Roe vs. Wade and the higher availability of abortion, but that's irrelevant to the discussion at hand. What the figures show is that American society is safer now than it was twenty years ago. Whether people "trust each other more" is purely subjective and not the kind of thing you can easily test, but you have far less chance of being murdered.

Is the child dropout rate not a measure of society? Is the fact that 95% of the nations wealth residing in 5% of the nations people not a measure of society?

Again, when was the magical fairytale period of US history when these things didn't happen? Was the US a fair and equitable place through the eighties and then the rich just suddenly happened overnight? These things have always been with us, and they may get worse or better over time but the way you talk it's like they just sprang into existence and caused all of the world's problems at once. For ****'s sake, stop whining, you sound like a bad girlfriend.

Is the fact that half a nation frets over giving the poor health insurance they didn't have before a measure of society?

I think the key words here are "giving the poor health insurance they didn't have before". Shows that even the US can make progress, right? I mean, is this not a sign of things improving? Sure, the right-wingers will bitch and moan about it but Obama still managed to get his bill passed, didn't he?

Get a grip, man, and get your head out of the clouds, and recognize that maybe the world you know is a bit different from others.

Which I did, in my previous post if you care to read it:

So, yeah, I might have a somewhat biased view of the world

Do you want me to recognise it again? I have a different view of the world to you. Is there any point to this?

Explain to me, with your all-encompassing incite into prevailing American societal trends, why six year olds are shooting up schools?

Because they have access to guns? Because they can? I don't know, six year-olds don't know ****, they probably thought it was a toy Megatron or something. As far as I can tell this has only happened once, at Buell Elementary, when some little kid shot some other little kid, I saw it in Bowling for Columbine, same as everyone else but I guarantee that if you put a loaded handgun in any classroom of six year-olds in the world, one of them would shoot another one with it. It doesn't mean the ****ing sky is falling, it just means that six year-olds haven't yet developed a concept of morality or the consequences of their actions.

I mean, I find this rather disturbing, and don't share your enthusiasm, displaced as it is. You might say something like, "yeah, but most kids aren't doing that", but a trend is a trend.

One incident is not a trend. Cite me, say, three examples of six year-olds shooting up their schools and I'll cede you this point. Otherwise, for the love of all that is sane and rational, shut the **** up.

When an Arab and Israel shake hands, it sure gives us all a warm, fuzzy feeling inside, doesn't it? But does that represent reality? Hell no.

Er, yes it does. It *is* reality, it really happened. I was there and it was a historic moment. It changed things, by offering people hope of reconcilliation and that perhaps the conflict might one day be resolved in a similar manner. Yes, bad things are still happening but we made a good thing happen - that's a step in the right direction. What do you want me to do, wait for god to fall out of the sky and magically make everything better or get involved and try and foster relations between bitter enemies? Show me your road map for peace in the middle east, mother****er, I double dog dare you. Show me how you would solve the Israel-Palestine situation in a way that doesn't involve getting people from both sides to talk to each other or alternatively shut the **** up about things you know nothing about.

And while we're talking reality, the Haitan reconstruction project is doing fine, thanks - I talk to them on the internet most days and do whatever I can to help. You can take your implication that OYW is just empty words and gestures and shove it.

I'm starting to think your association with such a noble cause has blinded you to the reality that happens in a day to day world.

I'm not blinded to reality, I recognise it. That's why we're working to try and improve things. How does your sneering "we're all going to hell in a handbasket because of godlessness" attitude help matters in the slightest? Again, what, exactly have YOU done to try and make this world a better place?

But you and I have a long way to go in making our generation better off then the previous one.

Well, tell me exactly what your contribution has been and I'll be the judge of that.

And that has little to do with enviroment, I'll tell you that.

What, because you say so? Please direct me to your research papers on the subject, because let's say we manage to make bees extinct - which is looking more and more likely. That's game over, pal. That's the collapse of human civilisation right there. I don't see how a few single-parent families or college drop-outs are in any way a comparable threat to mankind.

But again, not everyone shares your positive outlook. I certainly don't. Maybe I need more of what you have. In truth, nobody but God Almighty can get a handle on the true position mankind finds themselves in. It's too complex, too big.

So instead of giving up, why not try to deal with those parts of it that you can directly affect? Instead of blaming other people's family arrangements for the evils of society, why not think "hell, surely I can make things better"?

I can only go by what I've seen the past 25 years I've been alive. And for the next generation, it doesn't look so hot.

Well thanks for your pearls of wisdom. If you lived in the UK you would read the Daily Mail and every other sentence you would be bleating about "Broken Britain" because you saw a chav once. I'll tell you one thing for free though - the next generation will (environmental catastrophe aside) enjoy the best standard of living that people on this planet have ever seen. Or would you rather go back to the days when medical science involved amputation and boiling tar?

And just for the record, I don't discount our threat to our planet. I believe it is very real, and am not one of the people to deny that efforts have to be made in reversing this destructive trend. My point is, in the final accounting, there are bigger, more insidious fish to fry that don't get nearly the attention they should, starting with the nurturing of our youth and addressing the challenges they face.

My point is, in the final accounting, if those children don't have food to eat, clean air to breathe or water to drink, then it doesn't matter if they're raised by wolves, they'll still be just as dead.

I have nephews, whom I love dearly, and I worry about their future, what they will have to deal with. Maybe it's unfounded, but as I say, I see where I was as a child, how I thought, and what's coming up for them. I use my youth and upbringing as the natural measuring stick.

Oh right. You see your youth through rose-tinted spectacles and now you're older the world doesn't seem like such a nice rosy place? That's called growing up, son, it happens to each and every one of us. When I was a kid I thought that governments were always fair, that everyone paid their taxes and no-one ever got divorced too, then I grew up and realised it's not quite as simple as that. Stop living with your head up your ass and deal with it instead of bitching and I might find what you say worth listening to. Until then, every time you post your vacuous, badly-thought-out, vague moralisations on this message board I am going to rip them to shreds. It's been, what, five years now and in that time you've learnt absolutely nothing at all except perhaps how to be more of a smug, know-it-all asshole than before, and as everyone knows around here, that's my job. Like I said, I've not been around the boards recently and so perhaps you thought you could post this kind of mouth-breathing reactionary bull**** unchallenged? No more. I'm back and I am now your nemesis, pal - every time you put fingers to keyboard I will be here watching you, and when you come out with something as insidiously nonsensical as the crap you typed out above I am going to use it to take you down to funky town.

I apologize to Bumblebeemus for the overly dour, oppressively negative comments I made, and I really hope that the America for Adia is not what I envision. My feelings really don't stem from any concern for myself, but the next generation. I want them to live in a country where people extend a hand to each other, and don't feel they need to step on the backs of the person in front of them to get what they want.

Wah, wah the world is a horrible place, yeah, we heard you the first time. Like I said before, you act like you're the first person to discover dishonesty - it's been around since time immemorial. You talk about the kids of tomorrow stepping on people's backs to get what they want, have you conveniently forgotten that your ancestors committed genocide on an almost continent-wide scale so that they could have somewhere to live? I mean, if you're going to talk about exploiting other people for your own gains, you'll find far more inter-dependency and co-operation in today's world than at any other point in history. Again, when was this magical time when no-one ever exploited anyone else? Stop dodging my ****ing questions and give me some examples.

No, MV, it was dirty. Not that you need my respect, or even want it, but I think with this last bit, I lost all for you.

I'm actually crying into my lemonade. I don't know quite how I'm going to live with the knowledge that an obnoxious, poorly-educated bigot doesn't respect me.

You talk the talk, but with such a sour display of debate etiquette, you come off as quite juvenile, really.

You can't talk the talk - you fail to address any of the points raised and you speak in vague generalisations that mean nothing. You make the mistake that I'm trying to debate you when I know from past experience that it would be pointless - I'm just flaming you because I'm sick to the back teeth of your half-baked opinions and your utter inability to back them up with any kind of examples or cohesive argument.

To think that we have in position to solve the world's problems up-and-coming young people as vicious in their demeanor as you, lashing out at others who don't share their point of view, well, it only adds to my worry.

Good.

There is a way to disagree in a civil fashion too. Thought you might have learned that on your world circuit. What would dear Kofi say?

Well, seeing as he launched a global campaign last year - Tck Tck Tck, Time for Climate Justice (I worked on that too) - and I've yet to see his global campaign against "avarice" or "dishonesty", combined with the fact that he's an incredibly brusque man with no time for idiots, I like to think he would tell you much the same thing but in fewer words and with less self-censored swearing. He certainly wouldn't have much time for your meaningless moralising.

Leadership calibre? Impressive. I'm beginning to understand the source of your bravado. Reality of common humanity? So noble. And yet your stance in this thread has been anything but.

So? This is not me working to improve the world, this is me flaming a loser on the internet. There's an etiquette for that too, and this is it. Deal with it, loser.

I'm guilty of derailing a thread (that, let's face it, wasn't getting many hits) and perhaps being overly pessimistic.

And it's my heartfelt desire that you learn from this experience and next time you think "what this thread needs is a bunch of vacuous moralising" you stop and step away from the keyboard. However, I suspect I will be sadly disappointed, as trolls like you never learn.

You sir, are guilty of simply being an ass.

If I were you I would take a long look in the mirror and say to myself: "Emvee's such a kind, warm, all-round great guy and yet he's being an ass to me. I wonder why that is...could it be that I'm such a monumental prick I've left him no other choice? Perhaps I'd better buck my ideas up and sort my life out."

One Juvenile World. Indeed.

You say juvenile like it's a bad thing. Aren't you the one who's constantly yearning back to your childhood when everything was perfect and no-one ever told lies? One Juvenile World sounds like your idea of paradise.

Finally, if you can summon the balls to respond, please do so by addressing the points I have raised above. Post links to some of your charitable works, post some statistics that prove your points, post something with a bit of logic or reasoning. Maybe try addressing some of the points that bumblemusprime raised in his original post instead of spewing your verbal diarrhoea all over his thread. If you do, I may respond in a civil fashion. If, however, you post another chunk of anecdotal, poorly-researched and largely meaningless waffle, well then it's just time for round three.

[bumblemusprime]

Author Jay Lake has a great post in his blog today about the "golden age of family" myth.

I like this a lot.

Pasted in here:


In this morning's link salad I included a wonderfully idiotic bit of Golden Age myth making, courtesy of the blog The Edge of the American West. Which reminds me of a woman I worked with years ago, back in the mid-1990s.

She was about 30 at the time, divorced, living with her boyfriend who worked shifts in emergency services. She was an art director at the ad agency where I ran IT and production. She lived in a conservative exurb of Austin, attended an Evangelical megachurch on Sundays, and came in every Monday grumbling about how liberals were ruining America, about the Clintons and their crimes, and whatever else her preacher had railed about the day before from the pulpit. Her constant theme was how much better things were in the 1950s when the streets were safe, everybody had jobs, and America was powerful and secure.

I finally got fed up with this and asked her how much she knew about the 1950s. Did she know anything about the African-American experience in those days? What about other non-whites? The unemployed? When I pointed out that in the 1950s she wouldn't have had the job she did because it would have been given to a man who needed to feed his family, and that she wouldn't have been allowed in the door of her church as a divorced woman living in sin with another man, she got upset with me and said that wasn't what she meant.

She wanted the good parts of the myth of the Golden Age without having to acknowledge or accept the prices people paid for them. I'll bet good money this woman today is a Sarah Palin fan and a Tea Party member, because that's the depth of thinking I see from conservative America even now. Not all conservatives everywhere, but from those in political power and those with media voices.

I atill think about her sometimes, because how the heck do I, as a liberal-progressive, even get her to see where her own thinking goes awry? She's like those Christians who demand literal subservience to Biblical truth, except for the inconvenient parts. There's no logic or coherent philosophy, only wishful thinking wrapped in justification.

Some of it is education and worldliness. One reason academia and journalism are so stereotypically liberal is people in those disciplines generally have to look at the world critically and think about the facts on the ground; at least if they're going about it properly. It's difficult to maintain my friend's level of denial and wishful thinking while engaging in intellectual honesty. Contemporary conservatism is a lot more about denial and wishful thinking than it is about intellectual honesty — look at the issues that drive votes: evolution denial; gun fantasies; fears of gays; climate change denial; magical thinking on taxes.

The myth of the Golden Age is as old as history. Children were always more respectful, the language always more well spoken, and times always better in the previous generation. But confusing the myth of the Golden Age with the reality of life is misplaced at best.

How to address that? Surely not through my rantings. But I'm not sure how to be more thoughtful in the right ways.

[Brendocon]

[bumblemusprime]

Yaya, I like you. For the record, I don't think you're threatening me. And I'm not really afraid of Skwege--I just changed the username so that I would have less of a chance of having someone come up to me at a con and say, "Hey, you're the guy from Lying in the Gutters!'

You're way off-base on this one, though. There is no Golden Age. A little history will teach you that only the privileged class can afford to believe in that myth. I would hope that as a religious minority (and maybe ethnic minority?) you would understand that all this stuff about families, about morals--this is WASP talk. Maybe Catholics and Mormons too, but the Family As Priority One is rhetoric designed to spread a heterosexual nuclear ideal that has traditionally been the province of white middle-class people.

Also for the record, Rob (Emvee) was, in the short time I was in his proximity, insanely generous to us, providing a place to sleep, teaching us HTML in the middle of the night with no regard for how it impinged on his work time, buying us several lunches and rounds of drinks, and letting me call him at all hours for directions around London. It doesn't surprise me that he is doing what he is doing and I firmly believe that he is doing it out of a kind heart and a belief that even shut-in geeks like us can inspire major change.

[Best First]

i haven't had time to read through all of this, but i am pretty certain that phrase "shut the **** up" isn't one that is used to claim the moral high ground.

And it's shame to see such geography fall away from an otherwise valid and truth fuelled response to what was a solid candidate for ridiculous post of the year. In fact given that the supposed learning is you need to bring the moderates together, and the themes of this thread, you could say it's irresponsible.

Plus, sorry but there is no way round this one, people bigging up their amazing conributions to humanity in comparison to people they have never met...

http://transfans.co.uk/relics_20031120-1-008501.php

So in conlusion: Calm down ladies.

[Yaya]

It's like you're channelling Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly or something.

Can you get any lower than this?

I didn't realise you were referring to America, I thought you were talking about, you know, the world.

You weren't intended to realize anything. I was replying specifically to Bumblebeemus, as we both live in America and will raise children here.

You made it as personal as you possibly could, naming an individual's daughter on the same site where he had to change his user-id because of threats, and addressing the whole diatribe to him as a guilt trip over having children in the first place.

Oh, piss off. He mentioned his daugther by name in this very thread himself.

I didn't want to step in and fight bprime's battles for him because that's his perogative

Then why are you "fighting his battles"? He is very well capable of standing up for himself, I assure you. If he has a beef with me, he can PM me or reprimand me right here. Not sure what happened with the whole Bumblebeemus changing his name incident, so if I said something I shouldn't have, I apologize to him for that.

I caught you out on it and I owned you for it. Now you haven't even got the good grace to stand up and admit it? Please explain to me in simple English, how your little rant up there was in any way "generic" or "impersonal". Do you even comprehend what these words mean or do you really think that everyone who posts on this board has a daughter called Adia?

Owned me. Hehe.

I assumed that if he is mentioning his daughter by name, that it would be appropriate that I could too. Maybe it's not, we'll have to ask him. Whatever the case, there were no ill intentions on my part. Just a general observation of what life might be like for the next generation, and a concern for how we might combat them.

Am I supposed to believe that your achievements and experience somehow give you a more accurate perspective on reality than would mine?

I've seen more of humanity than you have and I've been to more countries than you have. I have a better understanding of the world than you have. You want to talk about lawlessness and broken-down societies? I've been to ****ing Afghanistan, mate. So until you provide me with some credentials other than "armchair republican", I'll continue to assume that I know more than you do.

Yeah, and your schwartz is bigger than my schwartz.

Seriously, did you just say that? This might be one of those rare instances where BF actually defends me.

You don't even know me, how can you mmake such ludicrous statements? You know more about humanity than I do? Maybe you do, maybe you don't, but to make such outlandish statements exposes you for the haughty self-assuming braggart you are becoming.

Let's do this. I'll copy my passport, you copy yours, and we'll see who has seen more of the world. I've been all over this globe. I've sat with a president of a country. But you know what? None of that makes a person more adept at effecting change for the better in the world. It certainly opens one's eyes to reality, but how one responds to that new experience, that's what matters, not that the experience actually happens.

For one thing, you are likely close to myself in age. There are things in life, no matter what level of education you might possess, that come only with experience and the passage of time.

Yep, and I've tried to do as much with my 31 years as humanly possible. I ask again, what have you done that's so ****ing great? Sure, you can pick holes in everything I tell you I've done, but at the end of the day I'd rather have my resume than yours. Please enlighten me as to how you have gained these incredible insights.

I surgically restore sight to the blind every day. I give people vision so that they might see the world in which they live clearer. I save lives by diagnosing life-threatening medical conditions that otherwise would have remained undeteced. I get people out of glasses who have worn them for over 70 years.

Close your eyes. Now do what it is that you do. Can't? Now open them. That's what I give to my fellow human being. I change the world for people in ways they never could have imagined. You want a ******* resume? My resume is less than a page long. Resumes are just words. They aren't deeds. I don't need a ******* piece of paper to tell me what I do does make a difference in this world.

All of this by the grace of God. I simply do my best for people with the tools and skills I have been blessed with.

You help people in your way. I'll help them in mine. But don't ever presume that your seeing more of the world or having a fatter resume makes you something special. It doesn't.

I am blessed with a profession that lends itself to gaining insight into the past by listening to the wisdom of past generations and the elderly.

You mean you fit glasses to old folk and listen to them rant on about how "...kids don't show no respect these days, look at them with their pants hanging halfway down their asses, in my day..."? I mean, really? That's the best you've got? Every generation talks like that about each succeeding generation, that's basic human nature - people are frightened of change, yet the human race is still here and flourishing. ****, if I'd known I was going to be arguing against the received wisdom of old grandpa Joe then I'd have brought along my large-print copy of Logic for Dummies.

You miss the point, yet again. Some things are only elucidated with experience. You can only garner them from the elderly. You can't learn them in classrooms.

And incidentally, I'm not a ******* optometrist who fits glasses. I'm a surgeon who operates on diseased eyes. There's a difference.

You can't know where you are unless you know where you've been. And that is the basis for my rationale, the words and wisdom of generations that came before and have become a fainter whisper with the passage of time.

Ahahahaha! Awesome. I'm assuming none of these old folks know how to write, then, or post their views online. No, they have to distill their wisdom through faint whispers to Shaman Yaya, he who they call "Talks-with-Grannies". I also resent this idea you seem to have that none of the rest of us are capable of listening to what older generations have to say.

The cataract population is a population of the elderly, by it's nature. As such, I meet primarily older people, who live in the world now, how it is and how it was. Your smug attitude towards their experience is ill-fitting a person whose goal is to make the world a better place. Sometimes, One Young World=One Ignorant World, does it not?

To disregard the importance of the concept of family, and it's role in development of the individual, and society as a whole, tells me you really don't have the grasp of things that you think your experience might lend you. It's a fools hope, it really is, to think individuals can make it in the world without proper nurturing. It's a ******* biological fact! Where do you find argument with me in that?

Oh Jesus-Sweet-Monkey-Christ riding a unicorn, again with the goddamn family! Look, I'm neither "pro-family" nor am I "anti-family", I'm just realistic enough to look at this world and say: "This family thing, it seems to work for some people, not so much for others." It's their choice; who made you the ultimate moral arbiter of how people should and shouldn't live? Should I tell my friends from single-parent families that they should just pack it in now because it's a "biological fact" that they didn't receive enough nurturing and they'll never make it in the world? What about my friend who was raised in a free love cult with no family structure at all? Should he give up his $1m business in Japan and slit his wrists because some Yoyo on the internet can't see beyond his boner for traditional gender roles?

I won't budge on this, so save your breath. Family is key. Period. What form a family takes differs for everyone, but the nurturing enviroment that children come home to from school is more important than the education they might receive, irrespective of intellect.

Again, you've got such a raging stonk-on for the perfect concept of family, you don't seem to have noticed that it doesn't exist and never has, except perhaps in your imagination. Please point me to this period in history where everyone lived in perfect family units, everyone followed their "traditional gender roles" and no-one cheated on their partners or abused their children, because I must have been away from school that day.

Won't budge. Family is key.

My sister is a child pyschologist who works with school grade kids. It absolutely, positively blows my ******* mind, the things they are going through, the things they say, the way they think. If you only knew that aspect, you wouldn't be so quick to become the ******* judgmental prick you acted like in your last post. To see children without hope, lost without parental guidance, it really saddens me. It really does. Maybe that's the source of my negativity. That parents have come to prefer themselves to their offspring. That's the very type of selfishness of which I speak, this total disregard for the responsibility of raising the one's who you bring into this world.

And my mother has worked as the headteacher of a nursery school (ages 2-4) on the edge of one of the most deprived sink estates in the Midlands for the past twenty years. I've seen these kids, they come from terrible homes and in some cases their parents don't care about them, but given the right education and care at school, they've gone on to do well for themselves, some of them even returning to the nursery school and working to help the next generation make the most of themselves. And yet the worst examples I've heard (and I've had to listen, often in excruciating detail) from that place are not about the children of the smackheads and prostitutes (though they can be pretty bad), it's when the religious man of the house believes it's his right to treat his wife and kids any way he pleases, because god made him a man and he must play that "gender role". I'd rather be the child of an absent father than one who felt it was his divine duty to beat god's laws into me. That's to say nothing of how these men treat their wives, who are kept like slaves. Like I said before, sometimes a "regular" family is the worst thing that can happen to someone.

Again, I speak for children in America. If things are hunkydory in the UK, I'm pleased to hear about it.

And blaming religion and preachers for everything gets old too. It just sounds new and exciting to you because, well, it comes from your lips.

How does your position give you perfect incite into the trends of American society? **** man, you are half a world away. You think just because you get some representatives on a stage to shake hands, meet Koffi Annan, agree on making this world a better place,and find and Arab and an Israeli and have them shake hands, that it truly amounts to squat in reality here in America? ********.

How's your "incite" into societies outside the United States?

Very limited.

Like my patience and time in responding to you in this thread. Maybe later.

[Yaya]

Sorry, BF, just saw your post. I will stop.

Apologies to you too Bumblebeemus.

to what was a solid candidate for ridiculous post of the year.

I have enough of those. Let someone else win the prize.

[Guest]

I really need to pick up those books. They sound like an interesting read.

Ditto.

I remember when The World Without Us first came out. I read an article about if humans dissapeared from the Earth overnight how long it would take for signs of civilisation to disappear.

I think it concluded that metal structures would take the longest, with something in the order of millions of years to erode completely.

However, I don't think it touched on the fact that there would, minor bodily impacts notwithstanding, be a dozen or so Apollo craft still sitting pretty on the Moon's surface for the several billion years the Sun remains Main sequence.

[Metal Vendetta]

Calm down ladies.

Message received and understood, but it was fun while it lasted.

[Metal Vendetta]

I remember when The World Without Us first came out. I read an article about if humans dissapeared from the Earth overnight how long it would take for signs of civilisation to disappear.

I think it concluded that metal structures would take the longest, with something in the order of millions of years to erode completely.

However, I don't think it touched on the fact that there would, minor bodily impacts notwithstanding, be a dozen or so Apollo craft still sitting pretty on the Moon's surface for the several billion years the Sun remains Main sequence.

There's a neat little interactive graph here:
http://www.worldwithoutus.com/did_you_know.html

I can't remember from the book whether it touched on extra-terrestrial human debris, but a friend of mine left something on Mars that if it survived the Beagle 2 impact* will probably outlast human civilisation. That's something of an achievement, I suppose

*and Starscream stomping on it in the Bayformers trailer

[Best First]

will probably outlast human civilisation.

I've done farts that fall into this category.

Smell my immortality.

[Guest]

a friend of mine left something on Mars that if it survived the Beagle 2 impact* will probably outlast human civilisation. That's something of an achievement, I suppose

Let's hope so. However, there is recent evidence to show that Mars is still geologically (areologically?) active, so it could outlast human civilisation, but probably not get anywhere near a Lunar lifetime.

And thinking extra-terrestrially, it's just occured to me that there's another dozen or so spacecraft that, being on trajectories that take them out of the solar system, barring (the practically zero probability of) collisions, theoretically could be around forever too.

[Metal Vendetta]

And thinking extra-terrestrially, it's just occured to me that there's another dozen or so spacecraft that, being on trajectories that take them out of the solar system, barring (the practically zero probability of) collisions, theoretically could be around forever too.

Unless the Maximals intercept them and steal their shiny golden discs...which does beg the (off-topic) question, what were they doing with the Voyager probe in the first place?

[Brendocon]

What we expect any sentient alien lifeform to do when one of our "intergalactic messages in a bottle" reaches them?

Or, y'know, G1 Megatron gloated to somebody about the message he'd left so they tracked it down and hid it.

[Metal Vendetta]

What we expect any sentient alien lifeform to do when one of our "intergalactic messages in a bottle" reaches them?

Or, y'know, G1 Megatron gloated to somebody about the message he'd left so they tracked it down and hid it.

I think I like the second option more...since the Autobots had already made first contact with the humans back in '84, it would seem a bit spiteful to steal their probe, as if they didn't want the humans to encounter any other races.

[bumblemusprime]

BF--I'm fairly sure that the drawing of Optimus and Megatron fighting is the greatest contribution to humanity, ever, and if we could spread it on a flyer around Israel and Palestine, we'd have a big buffet of religious tolerance in no time.

Okay. So let's discuss the issues brought up in this thread without too much malice.

Do people really have a right to have as many kids as they want? Diamond, in Collapse, doesn't say it outright as Weisman does, but it's clear that the successful societies he talks about have, indeed, forced population restriction. I remember reading Ender's Game as a kid, in which the main character is the third kid of a family deemed to have such promising genes that they were allowed to read the one-child rule not once, but twice. I thought, "how horrible if you couldn't have as many kids as you wanted!"

I also remember reading an article about Chinese women who would take their bikes across town every day so their kid could play with his/her (usually his, given the disposal of Chinese girls) cousin.

So why not expand that and create a social experiment: brothers and sisters with spouses living together, having less kids but raising cousins as brothers and sisters.

I think that this model needs to replace the old nuclear family. What better way to learn that "it takes a village" and what better way to reduce overpopulation but still get the brother/sister benefits, aside from adoption? I can imagine that it would be terribly hard to get used to at first, especially since, you know, it's my sister and we would fight, and we would be accommodating four adults with all their idiosyncracies.

But perhaps that is part of this culture of entitlement that has led us to [composite word including 'f*ck'] the world anyway? No other culture until the Victorians glorified this idea that a middle-class existed and deserved a nice house in the suburbs.

Thoughts? Expressed in careful words?

[Guest]

What we expect any sentient alien lifeform to do when one of our "intergalactic messages in a bottle" reaches them?

Or, y'know, G1 Megatron gloated to somebody about the message he'd left so they tracked it down and hid it.

I think I like the second option more...since the Autobots had already made first contact with the humans back in '84, it would seem a bit spiteful to steal their probe, as if they didn't want the humans to encounter any other races.

Or, something had happened to 'present-day' Earth that would have made alien interest unwelcome.
Perhaps the humans themselves asked the Maximals to retrieve the probes.

[Yaya]

Thoughts?

Well, I think....

Expressed in careful words?

Oh. I fold.

[bumblemusprime]

Thoughts?

Well, I think....

Expressed in careful words?

Oh. I fold.

Oh, come on. Be a man, sucka. This doesn't even involve defending Mike Costa, a far less tenuous position than anything you could argue here.