The Largest Problem of All

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Re: The Largest Problem of All

Postby Nordic » Wed Mar 17, 2010 1:51 am

Col. Quisp wrote:The largest problem of all is figuring out how to stop the methane from escaping from under the permafrost. If we don't do it soon, we won't be here long enough to worry about other problems.


Okay, I'll get right on that and let you know what I come up with.
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
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Re: The Largest Problem of All

Postby Simulist » Wed Mar 17, 2010 2:04 am

Humans have done quite enough of "subduing the earth" — now it's time to change course. But do we have the collective strength?

I think the biggest problem humans now face is the vital — and immediate — need for individuals to come together to figure out ways of transcending the "survival of the fittest" drive in our genetic programming in order that other species (and also other humans) can survive this Sixth Extinction.

The "lion" will not survive this without the "lamb."

Thus, not the "fittest," but only the meek will inherit the earth.
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Re: The Largest Problem of All

Postby Sounder » Wed Mar 17, 2010 8:01 am

The Largest Problem of All

Lies within that small and worthless part of the human brain (too bad evolution is too slow). That greedy, angry, paranoid, vengeful, hateful, insecure, egocentric, self-absorption part. Lizard part. Back brain. The internet introduced the anonymous human interaction allowing all of those characteristics to flourish and eh, thrive. It's easy to find like-minded places and people online and spend time bouncing one's reflection around from mirror to mirror.

I hear you Blue, although this seems like less of a problem at RI than at most sites. And no one would suggest that pre-internet interactions were not also ‘back brain’ driven. But I don’t want to demean back-brain functions, cause it’s a part of what got us at least this far. As to the reflections bouncing, isn’t that what their supposed to do? It cannot only be ego aggrandizement or tribal identification to have ideas bounce, there must be a possibility for the ideas to develop and refine.

Humans need physical touch, sight, sound, etc. to survive.

Yes, yes, this is how we touch and are touched by the ineffable, the spirit of life and vitality. So (for me) the ‘largest problem of all’ has to do with how our psychical conditioning system uses a split model of reality, implicitly building barriers between layers of reality (nature).

Developing a continuum based psychical conditioning system will require many many more bouncing ideas than what we have going so far.

Hey 23, nice response for Hugh.

--- from Deep Economy by Bill McKibben

Sounds like a good book CW, we so easily convert wants into needs, silly humans.
All these things will continue as long as coercion remains a central element of our mentality.
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Re: The Largest Problem of All

Postby Cordelia » Wed Mar 17, 2010 9:30 am

Col. Quisp wrote:The largest problem of all is figuring out how to stop the methane from escaping from under the permafrost. If we don't do it soon, we won't be here long enough to worry about other problems.


This isn't bullshit.

Family killed by methane gas from pile of manure
BY DIONNE WALKER
ASSOCIATED PRESS


BRIDGEWATER, Va. - Deadly methane gas emanating from a dairy farm's manure pit killed five people - a Mennonite farmer who climbed into the pit to unclog a pipe, and then, in frantic rescue attempts that failed, his wife, two young daughters and a farmhand.

"They all climbed into the pit to help," Sheriff Donald Farley said.

Farmers typically take pains to ventilate manure pits where methane often gathers. A family member questioned whether cattle feed could have trickled into the pit and accelerated the formation of the gas.

"You cannot smell it, you cannot see it, but it's an instant kill," explained Dan Brubaker, a family friend who oversaw the construction of the pit decades earlier.

Scott Showalter, 34, apparently was transferring manure from one small pit to a larger holding pond on Monday evening, the sheriff said.

About once a week, waste is pumped from the roughly 9-foot-deep pit into a larger pond. When something clogged the drain, Showalter shimmied through the 4-foot opening into the enclosure, which is similar to an underground tank. He would have climbed down a ladder into about 18 inches of manure.

"It was probably something he had done a hundred times," Farley said. "There was gas in there and he immediately succumbed."

Believing Showalter had suffered a heart attack, police said, a farmhand followed him moments later and also passed out.

That's when another farm worker alerted Showalter's wife, Phyillis.

"The family took off to try to get him," said Sonny Layman, who rents a house on the farm. "Phyillis threw the phone out at me and asked me to dial 911." Layman instead followed her and two of the Showalter's four children.

By the time he got to the pit a few feet away, "They were all gone, except Phyillis."

Layman said he tried to pull the woman out of the pit but could not. She died, along with daughters Shayla, 11, and Christina, 9, and farmhand Amous Stoltzfus, 24.

http://www.lubbockonline.com/stories/07 ... 7037.shtml
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Re: The Largest Problem of All

Postby 23 » Wed Mar 17, 2010 12:27 pm

"Humans need physical touch, sight, sound, etc. to survive."

Unfortunately, this is also the underpinning of gross materialism as well.

Or our need to identify with the stuff in our lives.
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Re: The Largest Problem of All

Postby compared2what? » Wed Mar 17, 2010 7:01 pm

The terms make it a little difficult to recast the question as a positive. Because you know, "What is the largest solution of them all?" reads weird, and since you're basically asking, "What is the final solution?" has some kind of unfortunate connotations, too.

But it might also be worth incorporating "What are our strengths?" or "What are our greatest resources?" or "What are our most effective tools?" or some question along those lines into our consideration of the question in the OP.

Because after we finished identifying the largest problems, we'd have to break them up into manageable portions anyhow.

So as a mental exercise in default-assumption-challenging, it at least probably can't hurt to try getting a jump on that by picking up our most effective tools and summoning our greatest strengths and resources in advance of asking ourselves what the largest problem is.

And it might even help.

Although it's just a suggestion, not a cure-all or a profound comment on human affairs. But the thought suddenly occurred to me. So I'm passing it along.
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Re: The Largest Problem of All

Postby Canadian_watcher » Wed Mar 17, 2010 9:59 pm

The largest solution of all is to rebuild local communities.

People are far more powerful on every level when joined together for a common good. It is impossible to have a common good (or a common enemy) in a 'global' village. Food, energy, health, natural disasters, education, justice, and support are easier to find, distribute & administer on a local level.
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Re: The Largest Problem of All

Postby 23 » Wed Mar 17, 2010 10:14 pm

Canadian_watcher wrote:The largest solution of all is to rebuild local communities.

People are far more powerful on every level when joined together for a common good. It is impossible to have a common good (or a common enemy) in a 'global' village. Food, energy, health, natural disasters, education, justice, and support are easier to find, distribute & administer on a local level.


And such communities are a lot easier to rebuild in a state that has seceded from the United States.

Substantially more localized control is a good reason to secede.

Not to mention the cessation of all funds to the coffers of war.

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Re: The Largest Problem of All

Postby MacCruiskeen » Wed Mar 17, 2010 10:30 pm

Blue wrote:The Largest Problem of All... lies within that small and worthless part of the human brain (too bad evolution is too slow). That greedy, angry, paranoid, vengeful, hateful, insecure, egocentric, self-absorption part. Lizard part. Back brain.


Humans do tend to give lizards (yuk!) a pretty bad press, though I don't often see those lizards making war on each other, or being paranoid or vengeful, or charging each other rent, or offering each other jobs, or even failing to care pretty deeply about their eggs in their own damnably-primitive way.

greedy, angry, paranoid, vengeful, hateful, insecure, egocentric, self-absorption


Humans also tend to give humans a pretty bad press, especially when they're mad at those other humans and feel superior to them, despite being human themselves and therefore possessing all parts of a human brain.

The Largest Problem of All... lies within that small and worthless part of the human brain (too bad evolution is too slow).


Humans also tend to give the human brain a pretty bad press, especially that "small and worthless" part of it that unites us with the rest of the animal, er, kingdom, so to speak. We might maybe pause for a moment and consider whether our obloquy might better be directed at the kind of frontal-cortex shenanigans that gave us such advanced concepts as kingship, problems and evolution in the first place. And then we might start thinking about whether we should be blaming any part of anyone's brain at all.

(too bad evolution is too slow)


Don't worry. Many a highly-evolved boffin is hard at work on that problem with his royal cortex right now. The consequences can only be humane, or at least human.
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Re: The Largest Problem of All

Postby Nordic » Wed Mar 17, 2010 10:37 pm

It's meat-eating that caused all the trouble. As soon as there were meat-eaters, the game became about deceit, stealth, cunningness and predation.

You don't see plants doing that kind of crap.

Okay, they do a little bit of deceit, dressing up like bright colorful things to attract pollinators, and making themselves poisonous here and there to avoid being eaten .....

But meat-eaters are all about being crafty lying deceivers, hoping to trick a victim into being lunch.
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Re: The Largest Problem of All

Postby Blue » Thu Mar 18, 2010 8:48 pm

Col. Quisp wrote:The largest problem of all is figuring out how to stop the methane from escaping from under the permafrost. If we don't do it soon, we won't be here long enough to worry about other problems.

Sorry to hear you had a computer meltdown after clicking a vid here, Blue.


Well, shit, Col. Quisp.

An update here. I gave the moderators a run down on my situation. Pending any info they give me, I want to apologize for the way and what I announced my computer attack.
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Re: The Largest Problem of All

Postby Blue » Thu Mar 18, 2010 9:38 pm

Yes RI is fine. Too much mirror gazing is bad...remember Narcissus?
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Re: The Largest Problem of All

Postby Blue » Thu Mar 18, 2010 10:21 pm

!
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Re: The Largest Problem of All

Postby Blue » Wed Mar 24, 2010 9:46 pm

Simulist wrote:Humans have done quite enough of "subduing the earth" — now it's time to change course. But do we have the collective strength?

I think the biggest problem humans now face is the vital — and immediate — need for individuals to come together to figure out ways of transcending the "survival of the fittest" drive in our genetic programming in order that other species (and also other humans) can survive this Sixth Extinction.

The "lion" will not survive this without the "lamb."

Thus, not the "fittest," but only the meek will inherit the earth.


I agree that humans need to overcome their genes, they need to ascend, yes evolve into a higher consciousness. Not the fad of fake ascension through sweats in Sedona or New Age counseling. But by a pure understanding that we all are connected.
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Re: The Largest Problem of All

Postby Blue » Wed Mar 24, 2010 9:55 pm

Sounder wrote:I hear you Blue, although this seems like less of a problem at RI than at most sites. And no one would suggest that pre-internet interactions were not also ‘back brain’ driven. But I don’t want to demean back-brain functions, cause it’s a part of what got us at least this far. As to the reflections bouncing, isn’t that what their supposed to do? It cannot only be ego aggrandizement or tribal identification to have ideas bounce, there must be a possibility for the ideas to develop and refine.


How eloquent, Sounder. I thank you for that soft glove. Yes, there are always things to learn and diamonds to discover in the dirt of the net and yes indeed RI has less garbage to wade through than any place else.

Sounder wrote:Yes, yes, this is how we touch and are touched by the ineffable, the spirit of life and vitality. So (for me) the ‘largest problem of all’ has to do with how our psychical conditioning system uses a split model of reality, implicitly building barriers between layers of reality (nature).

Developing a continuum based psychical conditioning system will require many many more bouncing ideas than what we have going so far.


While I will agree that conditioning, especially through mass media and now social networking tools people are driven into reality modes that are not really their own, but devised, and yeah they sure as hell create barriers to real life experiences because the virtual world is often a fantasy world that is sooo much better than the real world. But tell me more about what you mean with this "continuum based psychical" system.

(Oh and a note here to RI readers. I was away awhile and have returned to find many thoughtful responses to my thread so I'm answering them one at a time. Sorry for the over exposure.)
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