Can a Macdonalds and Walmart society responsibly

I`ve heard many people, both highly educated and not so much, refer to our modern western society as the most advanced and developed of any human society in history. So far, archeology tends to support this thinking, and I think its probably fairly accurate in many considerations.

However...

The World Health Organization released a report recently (according to a presenter at ted.com) which stated that as many as 1 out of 5 humans on the planet are clinically depressed. We live far longer than our ancestors, yet the majority of suicides happen after the age of 65. This information suggests that those of us who believe this advancement may be something of a thin crust formed over a vast sea of lava, may need to find a way to be heard.

What I`m getting at is....we`re fooling ourselves.

Most of us in this western society have been convinced that the only way to be a worthwhile, productive member of our society, is to get through school, get a job and then start racking up debt . At the same time, in order to provide ways to rack up this debt, we`re brought to believe that we are in control of our lives because we can choose a car from hundreds of different styles, and we can have a meal in 5 minutes that we chose from any numbers of prepackaged options and live in a house personally designed for us, complete with 3 stall garage. We`re given the chance to identify with our heroes by wearing the same kind of shoes or shirt or having the same hairstyle. We`re given any number of ways of handling our human emotions (most of them costing more than most humans in the world can afford), other than just accepting and facing them.

Basically, we are led to produce and consume as much as possible, in order to power the machine of PROGRESS.

So here we are; about 1.5 Billion of us living comfortably, consuming our gargantuan quantities and the other 3.5 Billion trying to scrape out some kind of existence all the while hoping to attain our western levels of `development`. The more rational and educated of us are finally beginning to realize that this cannot continue, yet onward it goes. We pick issue after issue to champion, rarely stopping to look at the big picture. In my lifetime it has been gorillas, the rainforest, various starvations, and now "global warming". These are obviously important issues but the reality is that the number of issues, globally speaking, is almost unfathomably immense...and we probably cannot even fathom all of them. The reality is also that most of them are interconnected.

That might be a good time to get into the potential connectedness of ALL things, but I don`t see myself getting into that philosophical topic, just in a blog.

What I do want to get at is the title of this blog. Can our western society, as it operates now, primarily following the free market economic model, correct the worrisome future we currently see? Is a society that produces the amount of mental disease that ours does, properly suited to managing our present, neversay our future?

I think the most current reference point is the current approach to dealing with the future of climate change. First of all, the media and government seem intent on narrowing our focus from global climate change, to global warming and then focusing even further on CO2. Even the most public champion of global warming, Al Gore is very careful to "reassure" us that the solution can be found in our current system...that we will not have to make any significant changes to our thinking or living. There is no discussion from him at ALL, that this current system may in fact be the largest culprit in climate change, neversay the rest of the list of issues that we face. Instead it`s straight to inventing carbon credits and assuring us that the Market will handle the problem.

Now I`m not going to rail on against our current system of the free market economy. I`m simply going to say that I personally believe it is a faulty system that takes advantage of negative human traits such as greed and the hunger for human power. I believe that it CAUSES bigger problems than it solves via technological advancement untempered by wisdom and philosophy and a commitment to human equality. I`m going to suggest that we need a new system.

I believe that at least part of the solution to so many of these global issues lies in a fundamental shift in economy. It is time that we began to shed the chains of consumerism and exploitation. It is time that we used the technological advancements that have been made, but relying on wisdom and common sense in how we apply this technology...rather than primarily relying on monetary cost. It is time that we woke up and shifted to an economy based on industrial hemp and algae, rather than fossil fuels and trees. It is time that we faced our emotions and our personal pains, and just lived.

I am quite serious in suggesting this change in economy. We have the capability to form smaller, more agrarian style communities that are sustainable and self reliant. This is in contrast to the current model, which leads us to nearly total urban living, where agriculture is as corporate as industry. These new communities could be engineered to leave wild areas alone, as well as finding a better balance between industrial Man and nature where we DO have to perform human activities. Its just not rational to suggest that 6, and soon 7 Billion people can live in a totally "wild" planet, so as much as I would like that, it is not a reasonable solution.

Mankind does now have the ability to live as we were taught was possible 50 years ago. We can live in a world where we do work, and produce, but where our lives are not devoted to production. We can be healthy and happy, and live in decent comfort AND equality.

If this thought should interest anyone, I am currently working on an outline for this sort of community and hope to be able to share it soon. Having grown up on a family farm, I know the spiritual benefits of an agrarian lifestyle. However I also realize the inefficiencies in the family farm; the lack of financial feasibility in the current economic system, the difficulty in getting time away, the constant heavy labor from sunup to sundown, the need to have lots of children to help with the work but then with limited ability for all these children to acquire their own similar farming setups, etc etc.

that`s all for now. Be well, Brothers and Sisters.

what about wisdom?

I watched a video on google the other day, from 2006. It was a final cut of a show called "Building Gods" and was about the future of humans and artificial intelligence, or AI. I'm sure anyone who would discover this blog would also know about AI so I'm not going to get into explaining it.

I do want to discuss something I found particularly bothersome about this video and about the ongoing discussion about humans and AI, in general. The presentation itself was about the possible futures for human/AI interaction and philosophies thereof. Basically, it was allowing a few people with specific insight into this area, to provide ideas as to where AI could go and offer their or other philosophies of why this should or should not be the case.

Here lies my problem:

Every one of them spoke of the potential for increases in human intelligence through interaction with AI and most definitely for unlimited possibilities in artificial intelligence itself. Indeed, the suggestion was that because of the level of intelligence that can be created in the near future, which would become self perpetuating, these beings would evolve into gods.

But not one person mentioned Wisdom specifically, at any level.

Isn't infinite wisdom one of the basic tenets of God-ship?

Now I admit, one could argue that the very topic of the presentation is the discussion of the wisdom of any of the potential outcomes. This MIGHT be true, but none of the speakers who actually work at developing AI mentioned thoughts of the necessity for this AI to be able to develop or process wisdom.

What was recognized and discussed was that AI makes use of logic...but I do not personally agree that infinite mathematical logic would be the same as infinite wisdom. At this point, I choose not to try to argue this point of view but if there is interest I may well attempt to do so.

But in looking at our current western society, we cannot even really quantify wisdom any longer. The closest we might come is the granting of degrees in philosophy, but isn't that just developing the ability to consider wisdom...as opposed to developing wisdom itself? Semantics CAN be important, after all.

I would even make the argument that our current western society tends to shun attempts at attaining wisdom. Rather than being respected and aspired to, such attempts are now mostly seen as "boring" or "crazy" or, more usually, a "waste of time". The reasons for this are many, and the subject of other and future blogs, but it is simple fact.

Since my reader list seems to remain at zero for now, I'm going to stop for now. Looking forward to replies tho.

Be well all.