dear sniv and cal----did the british empire fall because of debt. from turt
Hi, turt. My understanding from what I have been able to learn here is that the British Empire is alive and well and ruling the world. -sniv.
My point here is that scarcity is a basic fact of material existence. All life reaches the point where its environment cannot sustain its growing population, and that population wanes as a result. Man temporarily skews this process by man’s use of technology to alter the conditions of his environment directly, allowing for more population than would otherwise be supportable. This is fine, except for 1) technology is inherently harmful just as it is inherently helpful, and the harm and potential for harm grows along with the benefits, 2) even technology cannot do away with scarcity as a basic fact, which is the same thing as saying that human global population cannot continue to grow forever. We are making the situation the worse for us the more dependent we become on our technologies. Likewise, even this dependency does not save us from the conditions of material existence. You point out that there is artificially induced scarcity of certain resources; I do not dispute that. But that is a secondary issue. Even if this were not the case, man would still face a limit to his population size and growth. Why does this matter? Because, artificial scarcity or not, man faces the specter of pushing beyond his environment’s ability to sustain him. What percentage of the world’s population is poor and starving? A significant percentage. Much of mankind has existed in poverty, misery and starvation with or without the help of “global elites” and human systems that manipulate resource availability, quantity and pricing. It is as if you think that were we to remove these draconian manipulating systems and groups from power, mankind would suddenly be swimming in excess of food, water, energy and resources, plenty and then some for everyone on earth. That is not the case.
So I circumvent the issue of artificial scarcity to look at the deeper, underlying problem of human population as such. I know you are more concerned with the former problem, and I am not belittling that problem here, only it is not my chief focus. Perhaps we just have different motives and intellectual investments here, which do not coincide enough for us to come to some sort of agreement in terms of how we construct our views and ideas on things.
Okay, we get back to the essential issue here, at least for me: the “green lie” is not a “lie”, man must become more responsible for the wellbeing of himself, his fellow life on this planet, and the planet itself. Man is a veritable God of the earth, over it and all life, and man must live up to this tremendous responsibility – so far, he is not living up to it, he is acting utterly irresponsibly, short-sightedly and greedily. You are trying to pin all of (okay, not all, but certainly most, or the most salient at least) humanity’s faults on man’s being manipulated and socially engineered by vast global conspiracies - in this way you are shirking mankind’s responsibility for itself. On an individual as well as group level. No, I am not saying such social engineering is not true. I accept it is true, in fact it is pretty much a logical given, even without reading any of the material out there, that such things can and do happen. But this does not absolve man for his personal responsibility over himself.
Now, I would be the last person to think that man as he is, now, is capable of such responsibility, as a whole, and so it makes little sense to “blame” him for not acting responsibly. But the problem persists however we distribute blame: man is pretty much a spoiled, selfish child that abuses his environment without regard for the long-term viability of this behavior, and without love for his fellow man, for other life on this planet, or for ecological concerns in and of themselves. Part of man’s maturing into a somewhat conscientious species would be his taking on concern for and direct responsibility for the state of the earth. Man has this within his power, but most people don’t care at all about such things - they just want to consume and feel good. Give your money to Greenpeace and buy a Prius, and they forget all about it. Well, that is not sufficient, of course, and it is only a masking of the real contempt and apathy regarding these issues. And yet, what does the fact that these people desire to give money to Greenpeace and buy Prius’s tell you, considering they do not actually care about these issues of environment at all? It tells you that these values, these ideals are spreading through human societies in a still unseen way. Man reacts to them, it becomes desirable to be seen, by others and by oneself, as caring about these issues, even if these issues are still too new to be fully accepted and realised, even if man is still too immature to understand their importance and accept it on a conscious level.
The point here is that the “green lie” is not a lie, we are facing real environmental problems. Consumption is not without consequences, scarcity is a fact of material existence. And if a certain amount of politicizing of the ecological issues is needed to force mankind to accept and understand these ideas, to learn in a personal and genuine way about what it means to be veritable Gods of the earth, and to take direct responsibility for this planet and for all that happens here, then these “lies” are entirely necessary and serve positive historical ends.
I see so many people, like yourself it seems, who understand that much of the “green issue” is predicated upon political manipulation and is ingenuine, and so they react against this in a crude and unthoughtful manner, and swing entirely to the other side, with “There is no green problem!! It’s all a lie!!” Well, that is of course equally false and an equally childish position. We need to get away from this sort of black and white reactionary thinking. The fact that issues are politicized does not render those issues without merit or truth. But the fact of politicization certainly does give otherwise motivated people a nice excuse to evade and ignore these issues, by clinging to the political side of it at the expense of the truthful side.
This may all be true. And yet, man is still for many reasons contemptible in his nature. Man is ignorant and immature. Why or how this is does not matter much to me. What I do care about is how we react to this situation - we ought not react with self-loathing or hate, as “they” would like us to do. Rather, we need to see man as a child, no more than an infant in terms of evolution of his consciousness, of self-awareness. We do not blame infants for their irrational and stupid behavior, we do not loathe them for their ignorance. And yes, children are certainly very easily manipulated.
If media is trying to get man to “hate and blame himself”, then of course I do not condone that. But that is not the real issue here, to me; again our interests do not necessarily coincide. I am concerned not with how man got to this situation or with who is trying to take advantage of it and why – I am concerned with how man is as he is, now, what this means in terms of the implications for man, his evolution and his survivability, and how man can reach the next stage of his evolution of consciousness. Do I really care that “they” are trying to cultivate man’s self-hatred by creating artificial environmental problems? No. Because there are real environmental problems that need addressing, and because man must, one way or another, come around into full consciousness of his responsibility for himself and for his planet.
I do not subscribe to Utopian notions. There is no “world Venus project” that will create some paradise on earth, and man is not going to come into a perfect land of plenty for everyone just by throwing off the yoke of oppressive political systems. But again, I am not using “slaughter” as a “blanket answer”. What I am saying is that if we want to come around into a position where the destruction of not just man and his cultures but also of the earth’s ecosystems themselves is not an inevitability, population needs to be brought under control. I think this will happen naturally, it always does with every species. One way or another man will be reigned in by nature, into a more manageable balance with his environment.
Yes, but again, I do not shift all the blame onto these entities. Man is responsible for his position on earth, for what happens here. Man needs to evolve. Now, are you saying that ALL of the environmental problems and socioeconomic problems on earth are caused by these “elites”? If so, then I can see why you focus so on them. In your mind, it must seem as if, if we could only get out from under their yoke, mankind would be ushered into paradise, peace and plenty for all (I am simplifying, of course). My point is that I do not share this paradigm of yours; I accept and understand much manipulation goes on, man is “blamed” for things that are not entirely his fault or even in his control. But this does not make the problem go away. With or without “their” plans and plots, man is still faced with the growing pressures of scarcity and overgrowth of populations, man is still faced with the burden of coming around into full consciousness of his responsibility for this world.
Okay, we identify the heart of our disagreements here: you place blame ENTIRELY on “them”. I do not. I see “them” as a part of the problem, a big part even, but not the problem as such. They are a manifestation of man’s deeper need for evolution in consciousness, and they are a mechanism toward this realization.
I think your shifting all the blame on “them” is a way for you to avoid placing blame on man himself, and a way for you to avoid facing the still present facts that man is in a precarious position regardless of “their” influences. I think you need to see “them” as THE bad guy in order sustain your paradigm here. Which is fine. But that is not what I am concerned with here, my concern is the state of things as such, as they are now, and where we are going and ought to go from here. I see “them” as part of the problem, but the are certainly not THE problem - they are a manifestation of “the problem”, which is man as he is, man’s nature and state of being in terms of his intellect, consciousness, conscientiousness, relative to where man ought to be given the state of his relationship to his environment.
I will check out that book; I have read many such books over the years. None of them convince me to absolve mankind of his personal responsibility and need for evolution in consciousness. They paint good pictures of what is “really going on”, yes, but that is supplementary material for me, it does not occupy the center of my sphere of concern here.
I can see that you still do not seem to grasp my position very well at all. That is regrettable.
Yes, but the problem with using this fact as a shield against the mechanization of human nature at the hands of technology is that it is not enough. The fact that man is analytical, that being a cog in a machine is not “natural” for man does not mean it still is not the case, or will not happen in a very real way. Human nature is always changing, up in the air, evolving over time as new ideas and passions and meanings are introduced, wax and wane in the soul. My point here regarding technology is really only that we cannot bank on technology to “save us”, in fact quite the opposite. I see the specter of technology as as a graver threat on the horizon than “them”, in so far as they are only a manifestation of the essence of what technology is, what it means for mankind. They will make use of technology, yes, but that technological spirit, that essential reality pervades and pushes into man, deep into his nature, changing him, remaking him. This is still very new, and we do not yet know what course this will take, but we can certainly form guesses. Science fiction has done much of that work for us, and we know how true science fiction tends to becomes with time.
Essentially, man needs to “wake up” collectively speaking and assert his Ego, his sense of “I”, Self, responsibility for his own being and for the beings that are entrusted to his care by virtue of his dominant position on this world. Man needs to find again that essential core to himself, that ground of Being which is his spirit and desire for life, love for life and for a better existence. All that has been built up around us by technology and by “them” could come crashing down to a halt where this to occur, were man to truly wake up. And yet, this does not happen, it cannot happen as of yet. That point is still off in the future somewhere, as a distinct possibility; likely, perhaps, but certainly not inevitable. But certainly ultimately outside of our individual ability to direct, control or influence in any real way. We can choose to be a part in this or that flow toward or away from such an “eventual” reality, that is our position of responsibility, of freedom of choice, that is how we participate and work toward these goals. But this is also why we need to conceptualize these goals and this work in more concrete, immediate real-world ways, because we intuitively know that we can only make such small differences in the moment, here and now, and that ultimately that final reality, that point at which mankind either enters or fails to enter into a new dimension of self-responsible consciousness, is outside of our hands. This anxiety of the unknown and the uncontrollable is what terrifies us, unconsciously. This unconscious anxiety is then fuel for our more real-world projects, for our motives to “fight the good fight” and thus feel as if we are “making a difference”.
Again, I do not shirk responsibility for man as he is, I do not avoid placing it where it stands now. I believe that your desire to see “them” as THE problem is your will to denial of the essential problem at the core of man’s existence here and now, in light of this man’s nature and its relationship to its environment and to the future. But I could be wrong – maybe it really IS all “their” fault? 
Maybe I am just not paranoid enough to accept that? But I believe I have more than adequately laid out my reasons as to why this is not the case, why “they” do not constitute the sum of mankind’s essential dilemma.
I quite agree.
It always is. Each generation, each moment in history has its eternal struggle.
Your analogy is an adequate one. The game is not “set”, certainly, although the score going into the 4th quarter still makes a big difference. If the score is 15 to 120 at the beginning of the 4th quarter, well, sure it is still “possible” for the first team to win, but… you get my meaning.
That isn’t really what I was getting at with willed ignorance and self-deception being at the heart of the human – but I can for the most part agree with all that.
Yes, there is something valuable within humanity, its “humanness” as you put it. I describe this generally as the experiential subjectivity of consciousness, self-awareness (the consciousness of consciousness)… depth of Being.
I am not an emotional Jedi, at least not that I am aware of. But I do have deep insight into my feelings and emotional states. I sort of “see” the multi-layered nature of these states, objectively when I contemplate them and directly when I experience them. This is how I know that paranoia is not the root unconscious source of the otherwise “negative” reactions that occur when one moves from within the herd to outside of it.
It just depends on what that experience imparts to you, how this being-imparted lines up and coincides with your deeper essential nature - is the experience incorporated comprehensively into the sphere of our consciousness? Does it inform that sphere in ways that are productive of it, or destructive? Does it expand this sphere or contract it? Do these experiences on drugs impart knowledge that is consistent with your deeper self that core nature, thus edifying this nature, or do these experiences run counter to this, overcoding it, forcing this primal natural energy to flow into artificial and insufficiently conceived boxes where it becomes trapped and gives rise to prejudices, habits, unconscious mental blocks, a fundamentally un-openness to oneself?
If I work hard to achieve a philosophical insight, by reading, writing, thinking hard for a long time, if this clarity of insight and accompanying emotional euphoria arise from this part of myself, then I will be author of this experience, I will own it, my psyche will integrate it fully because it has already traced the inner nature of this experience from the beginning, it knows where and how it fits into by overall being. Whereas, if I just pop some acid, those philosophical insights are of a different quality. This is not to say nothing good can come of them, and it is not even to say that anything detrimental will come of them – it is only saying that the quality, the character of the experience and how it relates to me, to my “essential being”, are different. You draw the line where you want in terms of this relationship to self, and I will draw it where I want.
Experiences are always such potential tools, they are always utility to the subject. If you find great utility in drug-induced experiences, then wonderful. I can say that based on my own experiences with drugs, while pleasurable, they did not inform my philosophical insight or clarity of mind, they were never a substitute for introspection, deep thinking, reading and writing.
Funding two world wars caused crippling economic debt, not sure what the fuck that has to do with anything.
Probably just means we know a colonialist asshole when we see one.
You can stop acting like a twat if you like but no.
Seinfeld and Ellen are indeed painfully unfunny, and almost make me depressed watching them. Then I flip over and find friends, well friends with 2 slightly different people and 2 more slightly different friends and I come to the conclusion that there is merely an autobot2000 writing all American comedy.
WTF happened, you used to write decent comedy now its all just the same old shit repackaged as the same old shit. Sometimes I just think the real writers died 30 years ago and studio execs have been fevourishly fishing through their bins looking for material ever since. Which means all they find is the stuff they rejected and then get fucking Doogie Howser to play friend 2. 
Friends? The sitcom Friends? I’ve been to secret meetings with masonic shapeshifters that were funnier.
But perhaps I have said too much.
But then every comedy is 2 people and 2 more people who are friends, and who get into some funny situations whilst or after drinking coffee.
That’s it that’s every American comedy for the last 20 years. If you don’t like friends, there’s no alternative comedy except in cartoons.
Lighten up, Francis.
What kind of conversation were you expecting? You throw out half-assed generalities lambasting my country and you expect…what, exactly? I noted that my observations based on my experience were nothing like what you’ve described and that’s all I wanted to say (along with proposing a theory as to what’s really behind the lambasting).
You’re very wrong, in my estimation, and there’s really nothing more to say than that. Now go run off and call somebody else a twat.
No I think I’m done calling people twats for today, you asked why people dislike America and intimated that the whole world is just jealous of how fucking wonderful your egotistical nationalistic country is, you didn’t like the answer because secretly you’d love to believe anyone could be jealous of you, but the problem is everyone thinks your country is kind of the Joke country of the developed world who got rolled over by China and has been royally screwed by a series of incompetent idiot presidents. Not my problem though. Go back to believing the whole world is just US wannabes if you want, if its comforting to believe obvious falsehoods, knock yourself out.
The real reason you are so widely disliked, by so many countries is all of the above though, undoubtedly.
Arrogance, delusions of grandeur, and false pride though is seldom all that flattering, trust me.
When?
I didn’t mean you as in you. 
Americans can’t even fricking speak English properly, don’t get irony, I think you have to start paying attention to what the rest of the world says for once.
Most countries really dislike you, some just mildly dislike you and some utterly loathe you atm, this is because of you, your actions, and your lack of respect for anything you sign or agree to, or any country but your own. no one likes a count
ry that acts like a count. You want to see it through rose tinted spectacles fine, but spare us your confabulations.
I’m sure wherever you go in the world everyone sucks your cock and pretends the sun shines out of your arse, that’s kinda what happens when you are in the customer service industry though. What people really think is likely to be very different.
Most people though don’t hate Americans as in hate people individually, they are aware that most of the fault for your decline in both wealth and popularity is due to piss poor excuses for leaders.
It would be polite not to use eye roll, when you have put forward a statemen that could be misunderstood, further it would be nice if you could specify to whom you talk, instead of useing genral terms. Replace “you” with a better and more accurate word please, that would allow other people like myself, to better drop in to a discussion, instead of wasting time to find out about what/whom you are talking to/about.
Er not my problem. I explained, if you don’t like it take it to the judge. By which I mean you as in you personal pronoun denoting a single person as opposed to the more formal forum you that refers to a group of people or the OP or topic generally.
It would be polite not to use eyeroll?
Oh. You meant me as in “one of those Americans.”
I see.
No not really but never mind.
Calrid - one of the problems you are having is that you have never been to America. TV in america is lame, to say the least. Besides Two and a Half Men, I don’t know of a funny sitcom on US television.
The thing about Seinfeld is that it’s a very american jewish “You never get away with anything” type of thing.
A synopsis of part of one episode - "Jerry’s arch-enemy, Newman, catches Jerry and his current girlfriend making out during “Schindler’s List.”
Just that line is funny, if you like american self-hating jewish humor. It’s not if you don’t.
I don’t think people hate the US because of its television. It’s amazing and frankly puzzling to me just how widespread the distribution of american TV is. The facts seem to be working against you, here.
Many foreigners, in my experience, hate the US until they get here. Until they see Walmart. Or the mind-boggling amount of open space. Or until they experience some of the basic freedoms we have. And this not just from people from third-world hellholes.
When a friend from the Netherlands visited me, he was impressed by the fact that we could have an open fire in the backyard. I love campfires. Can’t have them where he lives. On forums, I hear a lot of people from Britain complain that they can’t have guns, or most of the knives we have here. I have both - I have never shot or stabbed anyone, by the way. Friends from Romania marvel at the array of consumer goods we have available, at prices that are unheard of over there.
America is and always has been something of a noncountry. While we have been restrictive lately with immigration (in a way - in a way we have not), america will always belong to the world. We are you. If we lack an identity, it’s okay. And we’re very materialistic - how could we not be? From the beginning, people came here for political freedom and economic opportunity. But it was you who came here.
My maternal ancestors were English - mostly Manx. Mongrels. Methodists. Poor people. My paternal grandparents from Italy - peasants. Shoemakers. Socialists, protestants, anarchists. They couldn’t flourish in Italy. They did, here. That’s what we are. We are not cultural geniuses like the Czechs. Nor geopolitical giants like Churchill. We have never had a Churchill, and we may never have a Churchill. We’re not artistic geniuses like the Russians or the French - but we were a place to thrive when the War started or the artists of St Petersburg truly were starving.
We are what we are. We’re good at what we’re good at. We can make decent wine now, which we couldn’t even forty years ago. We’re not as arrogant as we are ignorant and uncaring. We’re superficial, mercurial and materialistic. But the american dream is still very much alive. People still come here from nothing and nowhere and make fortunes. That’s what we are.
Beautiful.
sniv i think you and cal should come clean.
the english speaking countries need each other bad.
lets forget the european union for now.
cal–how can england help the usa.
sniv----how can the usa help england.
from
turt(arent i a nice reptile)
I don’t hate the US, I hate their leaders.
It’s hard to hate a nation you identify with so much and its people accordingly. Some of my best friends are from the US. 
You are what you are and you are good at being what you are, your government is good at representing what you are not. I hope you get over that stumbling block.
I really don’t have a personal grudge against any person or people therein, although the whole arrogant asshole thing is kinda wearing thin. What I do have a problem with is morons who run their country into the ground because they are self righteous cocktards and they smell of sulphur. 
Luckily the US is learning the hard way that not everyone is in it for the greater good no matter how patriotic they seem, some people are just twats.
Criticise everything about politics if it is a sink hole, because that is that is the only true democracy.
“Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!”
Albert Einstein
“Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.”
George Washington
"
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."
Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, American Society of Newspaper Editors, 16 April 1953
“Do not… regard the critics as questionable patriots. What were Washington and Jefferson and Adams but profound critics of the colonial status quo?”
Adalai Stephenson.
“Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.”
Mark Twain
Dismiss them as trite or way behind your values, but they were true patriots not sheep.
“What is most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class.”
Alexis de Tocqueville
I would change this quote from they do not form a class to they do not have any class.
I’m highlighting why the world distrusts America and why it is currently so unpopular not trying to establish that my country is all that popular. Wouldn’t even try I know we’re not that popular, but not in the same league as the US atm.