fantastic post to those who live in industrialized nations and are higher up on maslow's chain..others wake, sleep and shit survival, where there is no room or thought of anything else...
For sure that is true, and we collectively reflect far too little. Plenty of outstanding books to read to guide us this way, but you can only take a horse to water, you can't make him drink. "The unexamined life is not worth living" - Socrates. But no matter how much the people during the French Revolution looked in the mirror, no matter how much Jews in Nazi Germany looked at themselves in the mirror, no matter how the Masada Jews looked at themselves in the mirror, there are inequities that are so oppressive that no amount of reflection will get you out of the hole. The problem is that the enemy in these situations was so easy to identity. The enemy today is an abstraction, THE MARKET!!!!! That is what Al-Queida doesn't get, flying planes into building with innocent people doesn't do anything but kill innocent people, who serve the same master!! Reminds me of a quote from "Crimson Tide". See the end of this post. In a world economy with no moral center, the market itself is the enemy. You know, there are millions of people that are simply giving up looking for work, just in the US! (probably hundreds of millions world wide!!!). Many of these people will spiral into mental illness, many of them into organized crime, many will join terrorist groups like Al-Queida, many will simply commit suicide. Will you look these people in the face and tell them to look in the mirror?
I strongly recommend this book: Twenty-Three Things They Don't Tell You about Capitalism http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8913542-twenty-three-things-they-don-t-tell-you-about-capitalism Morpheus: ... It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. Neo: What truth? Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo.
Nitro, I've seen the movie "Crimson Tide" a million times and yes, I'm aware of the quotes from the movie. Here is where I'm going to disagree with you. There are people today that live in complete and utter happiness in Tibet with no material possessions or desires. You keep talking about all these people who are suffering (your yourself perhaps) without ever thinking about the true source of their unhappiness. This hyperbole about what will happen to all those that can't find work is just that, hyperbole. I suggest you put down the anti-capitalism books and start reading about the depression. There were bread lines in this country Nitro...Bread lines!!!! Alright it was bad. It was really bad. Much worse then now. And we got through it. We got through it because as individuals we changed. Instead of the excess and greed of the 1920's, people actually started saving money. They didn't buy stuff. They didn't try to impress their neighbors. And you know what else they didn't do? Trade!!!!! That's right, they weren't chasing a dream of making millions by looking for a holy grail in the market place. That's not a shot at you, that's a shot at our society that seems to be more interested in the quick buck then actually building something. Whether it's flipping real estate, marrying for money, suing someone for all their worth or just stealing it from unsuspecting investors. The pain we are going through now is absolutely critical for us to survive as a species. We cannot, we absolutely will not survive without this pain. Your examples of the Nazi's and other dictators are a bad example. If I come over to your house and kill you, there really is nothing society as a whole or you as an individual can do about that. I'm talking about the broader economic landscape that we all shape and form. I'll say this again, the way out of this mess is to look inward, not outward. Fix yourself first. Then help those around you. It's the exact reason why on a plane the flight attendant tells you, in case of an emergency, put the oxygen mask on yourself first, then on your child. Because if you can't breathe, you won't be able to help your child. The same rule applies to society. You are asking for these broad economic disparities to be fixed yet you don't want people to fix these problems in their own life. Nitro, for the love of God man, where do you think these "broad" problems come from? They don't come from outer space, they come from each of us as individuals. Do you know who the Yanomamo tribe is Nitro? They are one of the last surviving tribes of people who live in the Amazon rain forest that have virtually no contact with the outside world. Only in the last half century have a few people made contact with them. They have no electricity and live off the land. They are a very happy and content people. No doubt they have no free health care, no public school system. I don't think you will any traders in the bunch. In your eyes, you would see them as having nothing. In their eyes, they have everything. And what's more important...they are happy.
Read this book if you believe material gains and money make us happy: "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse" http://www.amazon.com/Progress-Para...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1299364328&sr=1-1
The Crimson Tide quote was meant as an analogy, that in a global economy, the "true enemy cannot be defeated" (to paraphrase CT), i.e., "Free Market Capitalism" (FMC). People in Tibet etc don't have to pay rent that is 60% or more of their "paycheck", don't have to drive to work and pay $4 a gallon to get there, don't have to work four jobs so that their children go hungry, and the list is endless. Their problems may be titanic as well, but what does that have to do with FMC? Examples like these always leave me exasperated. If I wanted to live like people in Tibet, I would move there! Also, if FMC has its way, Tibetians will not be allowed to live this way for much longer, they will be assimilated soon as FMC is a virus! Well, I don't know anyone that thinks about these things more than I do and if somehow that comes across differently on these boards, then I have no idea which of my almost 16,000 posts caused your confusion. Again I am exasperated at your line of reasoning because your responses show you don't understand the problem. It isn't my "happiness" that is at stake on first approximation, it is a runaway system that dehumanizes people in the work place, and worse, has no moral center, and that is when you are one of the lucky ones and have a job!. This is the desease, the symptoms of which have been discussed in countless numbers of threads on ET over the years. What? Dude, seriously, it isn't I who says these things. I am getting really exasperated now, because I have no idea what hole you live under to say this stuff. Here, I don't want to do the work for you: http://www.shadowstats.com/ I have misrepresented myself. I have nothing against Capitalism per se, only FMC. It was horrendous by any measure. Well, that people want to trade instead of going to work should tell you something. To you it seems to say that people are lazy. To me it says that the consciousness of our species is evolving, and that this endless work only to exist, compounded with such inequities where rules apply to one set of people and not another, is no longer acceptable. If instead of blaming people that are complaining, we listened to them, we might all proceed forward. What pain are you going through? You have a job. The examples with the Nazis is almost as good as your examples of Tibetans. I am now completely exasperated. You don't understand. It may be my fault. The problem as I see it is a duality that feeds on itself between the system itself and people. But you are trivializing the "chicken and egg problem" of which causes which, and that in fact it must be people that are the problem and the root cause. A system attains a life of it's own once it is set in motion, and the whole point of this thread is that FMC, a faceless enemy, is at the root of all this evil! Economics is not an ethical system. It only tells you what the most efficient way to allocate resources is. Without a moral center, which it has become in the system of FMC, it becomes a mortal enemy of all freedom loving people. Many systems are emergent. If we want to discuss the economics of the Yanomamo, then maybe we could learn something. But I live in a world that is controlled more and more by FMC. If FMC has it's way, the Yanomamo will be assimilated soon too anyway because their way of life, through the glasses of FMC, is not efficient and we are not extracting maximum value from their life. Maybe you will stop and read, listen, and get the message of this thread. Maybe not. Read the book I suggested on the previous page, it may broaden your perspective and understanding of current issues that are being lived by tens of millions of people.
They are actually a very vicious tribe. Who's kill rate is something like 40% of all males under 30....I didn't fisnish watching the HBO documentary.
like you pointed out...many of these people don't have the time to dream about being a tibetan monk or about how happy it is too spend precious moments with their family...they are just in one gear and that is SURVIVAL.
Violent yes, primarily due to the fact that competition for mating is fierce. That violence is not a product of economic issues though.