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The Greatest Evil
This discussion could go anywhere. But what do you all feel is the greatest threat to civilization today?
I know some of you might be tempted to argue with my usage of the word "evil." But we can argue the existence of good and evil somewhere else. Ignore it and use the word "threat" if it suits you better.
Please try to be as specific as possible.
I know some of you might be tempted to argue with my usage of the word "evil." But we can argue the existence of good and evil somewhere else. Ignore it and use the word "threat" if it suits you better.
Please try to be as specific as possible.
0
Comments
This is a threat to freedom of choice and religion.
A high-tech civilization requires a high-IQ population just to maintain it's infrastructure.
For the rest of the world overpopulation and global warming are a ticking time bomb. The Green Revolution delayed the overpopulation problem for decades, but it hasn't gone away. In some places like sub-Saharan Africa the population is 10 times the carrying capacity of the land. Global warming is only going to make the problem worse.
There are plenty of Islamic people who are more than smart enough to build and maintain a high-tech civilization. Thus, they are not a threat to civilization itself. Islam is only a threat to your culture.
Please read what i put...political islam is a threat to culture and civilisation, what dark ages will we head back to when islamic law is implemented, i neednt remind people of what happened to the buddhist of afghanistan and pakistan.:rolleyes:
Global warming is not a problem. It's a political issue, see ClimateGate for details.
Also, the carrying capacity of the land is often cited by Malthusians, but it doesn't hold weight. Our planet can support far more humans then we have now. If anything we are vastly underpopulated.
While I agree that the strict form of Islam in Afghanistan is destructive to civilization, I was just making the point that many Islamic people are smart enough to continue on with civilization. Other countries, including many arab countries have instituted Islamic law without bringing about the end of their civilization. Dubai seems to be chugging along.
This one probably gets my vote. Have you read "While Europe Slept"?
This was the vagueness that I was talking about. You really think society would be better off if only the smartest people ran it?
But...at the same time the only Muslim nation that is ranked as "free" I believe is Mali or Montenegro. I don't remember which. Sharia law does not mean the death of us all, but it certainly spells the death of liberty wherever it takes root.
No, I think society would be better off if fully enlightened Buddhas ran it, or at least Arahants, but that's not likely to happen. And you didn't ask what we think would be best for society. You asked what civilization's greatest threat was.
I was not trying to be vague. I have read that if a population's average IQ falls below 90, it will become increasingly difficult to maintain a high-tech infrastructure without outside help. Buildings, roads, bridges, power plants, power lines, water and waste treatment all require a certain level of intelligence to build and maintain in working order. Without those things it would not be possible for our present civilization to exist. If the general population isn't able to continue to produce people smart enough to maintain those complex systems, they will break down. Everything we have built is impermanent.
Being a free civilization was not specified in your original post. Many civilizations throughout history have not been free. Liberty is wonderful, but again, it is not needed for a civilization to function.
ClimateGate is bull. It's like trying to refute evolution by bringing up Piltdown. It has nothing at all to do with the evidence for global warming.
yeah, right. I'm not a Malthusian. People much smarter than Malthus gave them credit for. However, saying the world is underpopulated is simply wishful thinking.
I was not trying to be vague. I have read that if a population's average IQ falls below 90, it will become increasingly difficult to maintain a high-tech infrastructure without outside help.[/quote]
how would it be possible to do that? Fall below 90? What would be powerful enough to shift the normal IQ distribution?
Have you actually bothered reading the e-mails? I have. I also dug into the CRU's programming and it's terrible. If their programmer was working in private industry he would have been fired for doing such a terrible job. The very fact that climate models were ran on such bad coding is enough to make me cringe.
If you would like to debate global warming in a polite Buddhist manner, I'd be happy to post some data for you. However, if you're just going to insult me, I won't bother.
Of course we couldn't feed billions more with beef and rice. It would help if we would change our diet. Considering how much land and resources it takes to feed all the animals we eat, if just the US went vegan it would free up enough food and resources for an extra billion people. Now, if we were further willing to change our diet and eat more potatoes, incorporate algae and other less conventional food sources into our diet, we could easily feed triple the current world population with much room to spare. I haven't even touched on hydroponics or genetically modified crops, which could potentially feed countless billions more. I could go on if you'd like.
Culture shifts. Lax academic standards. Drug exposure that causes brain damage. Apathy. Any number of things could potentially cause us to devolve into an Idiocracy. Have you been to a Walmart lately and looked around?
No i havent read while europe slept as i dont need to be awakend to see who my neighbours are
Sharia law and islamic society are destructive and incompatible for western nations based pretty much nowadays on secularism, people need to remember that islam means " Submission " it is niave and dangerous for us to think that tolerance is part of the spreading movement of jihadists and well for lack of a better word devout muslim practitoners who by their commandments are obliged to spread islam.
As individuals muslims are as any of us, but as a theological practise which also happens to be very expansive and political by nature is not something to ignore.
That's a very Platonic notion. Are you familiar with his Republic? The idea of enlightened Guardians? I see no evidence to suggest that there is a decline in society's IQ. But then again, I place very little value on it. I am much more interested in peoples' character. There will always be enough smart people to operate all the bells and whistles. I myself am a man of the classics and history. I am mechanically incompetent and do poorly on standardized and IQ tests. So I would not fare well as your leader.
True. I should have been more specific myself in my initial post. My question could be interpreted in a multitude of ways. Either as an existential threat to humanity or on a less grand scale, a threat to civilization as we know it. I had Western-centric civilization in mind, so basically the idea of open societies, democracy, etc...
(oo i feel like yoda):crazy:
Seeing something as a threat usually means that we are afraid of change. Even what we call "modern society" will one day end, as everything else - thats its very nature. Seeing something as a threat means that we dont want our impermanent society to change - we want it to be unchanging and stable forever.... but it isnt.
We usually see sicknees and deteriorating, as a symptom of that something is wrong - but since everythings true nature is change, deteriorating is at natural thing.
So once again. Wht is a threat really???
Much love Allan
Yikes. Yes, I am afraid of some change. I'm afraid that 7th century thugs will gain control of various governments and cause mayhem.
No, I dont' want my impermanent society to change and be held hostage by the aforementioned thugs. Call me stubborn, but I'd rather hopelessly defend a dying free society than roll over and 'accept the change' to a much darker world.
It's still ad hominem. A handful of scientists did sloppy work. Big deal. A handful of politically useful emails have nothing at all to do with the observations Climatologists have made over the last 100 years. The earth is heating up and it looks like human activity is driving it. Even if it isn't human activity we may be able to slow it down through our own efforts. That would be a Good Thing. Ignoring it so industry doesn't have to clean itself up is a Bad Thing.
only wealthy westerners can stay healthy on a vegan diet. I agree that most wealthy westerners ruin their health with way, way, way too much meat in their diet. But it's a question of balance. When you start adding billions of people to the biosphere as it is now, you can feed them on some vegetarian version of Soylent Green, but the pollution alone will be lethal. If we all want to drink clean water, breathe clean air and have a decently prosperous and comfortable life for our grandchildren, we are going to have to control our fertility. Fortunately the easiest and best way to do that is to educate women and make birth control available. When women have the freedom and the means to take control of their fertility, they do.
I go to Walmart frequently and see the entire range of humanity there. All those things you list don't lower IQ. They reduce productivity or functionality. Brain damage can lower IQ but isn't heritable. Apathy and low academic standards make you ignorant, but not stupid (and they are not heritable either).
Susan
I'm not well versed in Platonic literature. When you say enlightened Guardians, do you mean the concept of philosopher kings? Because I wasn't talking about the IQ of leaders. I was talking about the average IQ of the general population, which has little-to-nothing to do with leaders. When you have hundreds of millions to billions of people, you need a large pool of intelligent engineers, architects, tradesmen and many others to design, build and maintain civilization's basic infrastructure. The higher the average IQ, the more likely you are to have enough people who are smart enough and capable enough to fill those positions. The lower the average IQ, the harder it is to find competent people to fill those positions.
Here in the states these days nearly anyone can get a university degree. There are people who are graduating from high school who are illiterate or borderline illiterate. I worked at a university for 3 years and saw a lot of dumbing-down going on in the academic world. There is already a shortage of qualified engineers here in the US. And while more people are going to college today, fewer of them are willing to pursue important fields like engineering. Good luck building bridges or nuclear power plants with droves of liberal arts degrees.
In light of that, I would say government corruption/oppression would top the threat list. Of course, Islam would certainly be right up there along with it.
I agree that fundamentalist Islam is a problem. But fundamentalist RELIGION is a problem. We would not want Pope Benedict ruling the world either and I would be willing to bet there are far more Catholics in Europe and the US than Muslims (by a factor of about 100 to 1). It's just that Catholics aren't strange and different. The current version of Christianity is pretty tame, especially in Europe, but you should check out what it was like even 50 years ago. 200 years ago it was even worse. There's not a nickel's worth of difference between Islam now and Christianity 200 years ago and that includes murdering apostates. Even 100 years ago women were under rigid strictures. They were nothing short of property--all heartily supported by religious conservatives. Christian evangelism and Islamic evangelism are neck and neck even now.
That said, all westernized countries should treat Muslims exactly the same way all citizens are treated. If it's illegal to beat your wife in the UK (and I assume it is) then all the same penalties apply to beating Muslim wives. If you can't take a driver's license photo in a halloween mask, then you can't take one in a face veil and so on.
one of the few advantages of a large population is having more smart people. If you have a million people about 250,000 are geniuses. If you have a billion then you have 250,000,000 geniuses.
that doesn't have anything to do with IQ, though. That's ignorance and laziness. Those can actually be fixed.
This is simply wrong. Knowing many religious evangelicals, I can attest that there is no comparison with fundamentalist Muslims. Christians, even the fundamentalists do not call for the death of unbelievers nor are there even small numbers of Christian suicide bombers and terrorists.
There is simply no Christian doctrine that has developed that incites followers to fight in the name of Christianity and conquer the world for Jesus. (As in literally fight). In Islam, there is. There is no concept in any other religion that is equivalent to jihad. Not even a crusade.
Facts are never ad hominem. The sloppy work and outright fraud that those scientists did is being used by the IPCC and government policies are being based on it. Since when is it acceptable to base policy on bad science?
I'm not the best at articulating myself, so I'll post some links if you don't mind. Here's some decent coverage of the ClimateGate scandal, it's a lot of reading, but has a great deal of information:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/climategate/
If you don't want to read all that, here are some highlights from the e-mails:
http://www.examiner.com/x-25061-Climate-Change-Examiner~y2009m11d20-ClimateGate--Climate-centers-server-hacked-revealing-documents-and-emails
And here's a programmer's take on some the CRU's code:
http://cubeantics.com/2009/12/the-proof-behind-the-cru-climategate-debacle-because-computers-do-lie-when-humans-tell-them-to/
Also, I'm not advocating that we should stop pollution controls. I think there are lots of pollution problems that need to be addressed. Metals, plastics, chemicals, industrial dumping and other pollution sources to name a few. I just don't think that CO2 is a pollutant or a problem. And I don't think that humans are driving global temperatures. I do think that land use changes and human activities have impacted local climates, but that's a far cry from controlling the global climate.
I would like to see decisions made based on hard data and facts, not political agendas and skewed computer models. Unskillful and hasty actions may do more harm than good. It's a noble ideal to want to save the planet, but when politicians and vast sums of money become involved, I become skeptical of the motivations of those in power pushing such agendas.
Sorry, population controls are not something I can agree with. I would rather work harder and see us develop new technology to sustain more people. If that means I must suffer a greater burden, then I am willing to accept that.
Also, what are your intentions for population reduction? You want to live a more comfortable life and have more prosperity for your children and grandchildren? Isn't that selfish? Samsara is filled with suffering. All beings born here are born into suffering. Wanting more material wealth for your offspring at the expense of other's offspring seems cruel to me.
Productivity and functionality are what I'm primarily concerned with. IQ is just a rough attempt to measure that functionality over a large population.
True that the things I mentioned are not heritable, which gives me hope for the future.
That's a wonderful argument in favor of increasing the population. I've often used that very same argument when debating with people who favor depopulation or population controls.
I sure hope they can be fixed, but at what point does ignorance and laziness start to drag down IQ? If one is too ignorant or lazy to learn, I would assume that would have some impact on that person's development and IQ.
you said "evangelism." In the ordinary world that's "recruiting." Both religious are rapacious recruiters.
The penalty for Christian apostasy is death: Deuteronomy 13:6-10. This Biblical passage is now widely ignored. Hebrews 6:4-8 hints that apostates should or will be burned which is probably the justification for burning them at the stake. The crusades were precisely jihads, intended to conquer the world for Christ.
The industrial revolution and secularism have remade Christianity into what it is today. Islam may also be similarly transformed. There's already some evidence that it will. Will western civilization survive until that happens? Don't know. My crystal ball is in the shop this week.
No, depending on the scale you use genius is usually less than 1% or less than 1/10th of a percent. So roughly 99-99.9% of people are not geniuses. I took the 1/4 mentioned by Susan to be a generalization. Still the basic concept that the more people you have the more geniuses you have is a valid one.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius
you are misinformed. I will check out your links.
nor I. Which is why I suggested the education of women and making birth control widely available. That's why I said "Fortunately the easiest and best way to do that is to educate women and make birth control available. When women have the freedom and the means to take control of their fertility, they do." Imposing population control on people is completely unnecessary to the point of redundancy.
how on earth did you get that out of what I wrote? Yes, adding to the suffering of others in a vain attempt to decrease your own is not only wrong, but impossible. Having a global policy of population reduction and implementing that policy by making birth control widely and cheaply available to everyone is a way to decrease suffering at the expense of no one. When I say "May all sentient beings be free of suffering" I don't mean that as just so much hot air.
When I talk about population control I am talking about sub-Saharan Africa (for example) where the population is 10 times the carrying capacity of the land--which means not just starvation is rampant, but war and lawlessness as well. THAT is unimaginable suffering.
a couple of hours after I wrote that, I realized it was silly. It's really more like the top 5%. Math is not my strong suit. (I was thinking "half the population IQ is below 100, the other half is above. Therefore halfway to the top would be 175 which is genius." It was idiotic, I should have kept thinking. It's a bell curve, duh. Half the population is NOT below 100. MOST of the population is about 100. And I still see the entire bell curve shopping at Walmart.)
Linking to Anthony Watts impresses me, but not in the way you hoped. It's like linking to Kent Hovind as an authority on evolutionary biology.
instead of googling "climategate," google "hacked emails" When you do that you get a much broader range of debate and information. The controversy is exactly what I thought. It's the climate-change-denier version of Piltdown and is meaningless. Some Australian climate scientists talked trash about the deniers (who doesn't?) and were less than transparent about their data for PR reasons, which was REALLY foolish. If every single iota of their data was dumped in the landfill, the globe would still be warming and CO2 emissions would still be the prime suspect:
http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2009/12/12/climate-gate-beyond-the-embarrassment.html
Global warming (if it is truly happening) may kill millions even billions but as a species we will have to adapt to survive and it may be viewed in the future as our karma to help civilization and humanity progress further towards elightenment.
I would say one threat that is vastly overlooked is the use of chemicals both self-prescribed and prescribed by professionals. These chemicals change our body's chemistry. I am not claiming there are not necessary drugs but we are becoming a civilization that is losing it's ability to feel and think. As they say we are generation Rx.
It seems you already made up your mind before bothering to consider the information I presented.
Buddhism teaches that we should investigate things with an open mind and decide for ourselves based on our own experiences and observations. If you are not willing to debate with an open mind, I see no reason to continue discussing this with you.
Maybe others can appreciate some historical perspective on the matter.
I wish you well.
You are!
No, actually it's still hatred, greed, and ignorance, just like it always has been.
BTW, like your pic. Much better than the other clowns you had! Finally, a bodhisattva!
Palzang
Haha. I think the previous few have been Barry Goldwater, a flag, Bruce Willis cursing, and bear face.
I've gone through great pains to find a workable picture of our lackluster 18th president, but brilliant general Grant. No luck. The trio of Grant, Sherman, and Lincoln are probably my three favorite Americans of all time.
In what way is this a threat? I'm ignorant of all math beyond a 10th grade level, and most of the world is ignorant in the categories of literacy and science. Does that really threaten civilization?
You probably mean ignorance about other people and the actions that stem from that? Again, why is that a problem? I'm wholly ignorant of African cultures and Mongolian cuisines. I don't think anyone's livelihood is under threat.
There's the ignorance of never having learned something and then there's the ignorance of choosing not to notice something. The disastrous outcome of the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crisis are both epic examples of the consequences of willful ignorance. Both were predicted by people with their heads on straight. Neither was avoided, because to do so meant staring some hard facts in the face.
Grant was a horrible Prez but an effective general. I wouldn't call him great. He won because he had no qualms about sacrificing as many soldiers as necessary to win and because he went for the jugular like a bull dog. In reality he was an alcoholic and not a happy man.
Palzang
He probably had the most corrupt administration of all time, but after Lincoln, he probably did the most for civil rights out of any president until Truman.
An alcoholic and a chain-cigar smoker to the core, yes. However, he beat Bobby Lee and essentially destroyed the Confederacy, which we should all be thankful for.
Do explain.
Well, I for one am never thankful for a war, even if "we" won it.
As an aside, Grant's home is preserved in Galena, Illinois, not far from where I grew up. Galena (named after the lead ore that is mined there) used to be on the Mississippi when Grant lived there, but then it decided to move west a couple of miles, leaving poor Galena high and dry. But in its day it was one of the major cities on the river and in the west (yes, that used to be considered the West). His home is really interesting to visit, and the town itself, since the industry basically moved away with the river, is well preserved and also very interesting. Worth a trip if you're ever around that area.
Palzang
It's worth noting that Lincoln was never thankful for it, either. He bent over backwards to avoid it. He didn't go to war to end slavery, but to preserve the integrity of the US. It's worth noting that the Emancipation Proclamation wasn't even on the table until the war was well past the point of no return, and was presented as primarily advantageous in terms of military strategy, not ethics.
The Civil War was about slavery. The primary motivation for secession was Southern fear that Lincoln, the 'black Republican,' was going to end slavery for good. Even the Confederate Constitution, almost identical to the union one, is different only in that black enslavement is a fundamental right. Ironically, if the plantationists had not been so obsessed with spreading slavery into the West, and if they would not have seceeded, slavery would have gone on indefinitely confined to the South. If you read Grant's or Sherman memoirs, by the end of the war, they certainly saw slavery as the root cause of it all.
States' right? Sure. But the right for a state to enslave huge swaths of its own population.
It's true enough that the common Confederate soldier wasn't fighting for slavery. But the typical German in WWII was not fighting for gas chambers either. And yet that is what they both defended.
And it's also worth pointing out that the Emancipation Proclamation didn't free a single person. It only applied to the rebel states, over which Lincoln had no control at the time.
Palzang