Opinion: A Word On Today's Society

[Paul-L]

We are dependant on technology, we cannot go back, we have been advancing since acient times; all the "past" stuff that we do not consider technology, was discovered and used to solve very particular problems that affected most of the population, like the discovery of the fire.

The problems of technology, the shadows behind it, is that, while being so "wonderful" and having such a potential to improve our lives, hides slavery; nowadays, it is impossible to study everything, so there's no other option than to rely. If we were to be prudents, we would wait until we can truly assimilate all these changes that technology queues, keeping ourselves from them as a safety measure.

We have to rely on technology because we always relied on it, we learned how to hunt, how to grow food, how to cook, how to build a home, and these were technology after all; even the people who say that do not rely on technology at all are relaying from it anyway.


We humans are assholes, we have always been; since we "as a group", want our group to survive, that evolved onto communities, then onto cities, then into regions, then into countries, we are humans after all; we want the group we are tied to, to survive as long as we can.

Therefore, democracy is not perfect because you rely on a single individual tied to the beliefs of a party and the people the party represents, not a whole representation of what the 100% of the population represents; a dictatorship is also wrong, because we are also trusting a single individual that does not represent the people, most of the times represent the opression or an emergency situation that has to be solved before going back to a pseudo-democratic system; therefore, communism is wrong too, because we can't just be "theorical" on how the society works by separating the individual from the "society", you cannot just expect that a "perfect" system would work because nothing is perfect, specially humans; communism cannot work because is a perfect "theory" for a imperfect human.


Pretty much, we are not chosing a right system, but a system that "works" and is accepted more than any other type; that's why democracy is the dominant now; because atleast the people has a choice instead of the dictatorship that a "kingdom"/communist system is.


Don't separate things, we separate things for our understanding because we cannot work on a single big thing (astrophysicists could understand this, and this is why they can reach a unified theory of how the universe works, because we have been considering everything as a separate thing); that's why communism does not work, and capitalism is not working too (but is preferable over communism, because pretty much you have an "election" of how any country will behave for some years),

[halfmanhalfamazing]

It's been proven that the only stable solution is a decent minimum standard of life. We are seeing middle class in many developing worlds turning from heavy population growth to negative growth, why ? They now have electricity, air conditioning, are not afraid of having their children killed due to violence, and have large cost of raising children changing their preference from 3-4 children to 1 or 2 per couple. This is seen in Brazil, China, Argentina, Chile, Mexico just to name a few examples. Once 2/3 of a countries population enjoys a basic entry level middle class standard of living this happens naturally.
The world is in the cusp of worldwide erradication of polio. The only countries left are Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Many other diseases are reducing their worldwide mortality rates greatly, yet this hasn't caused a pickup in worldwide populational growth, because average standards of living are improving too, bringing down birth rates.

I guess individuals are great after all. (this is not sarcasm)

But then if all of this happens naturally(which I agree, it does), where is the recognition from the malthusian crowd? (and many other collectives) You would think that the individual would be all of their knights in shining armor, so to say. It goes to say for the original author as well.

Individuals clean up their own lives naturally. So this idea that individuals are the problem is bunk. Free citizens won't build a reactor like the kind that exists north of Kiev that never once took safety into consideration. Free citizens build one that successfully prevents itself from melting down, such as 3 mile island.

I can't say, nobody can say, that individuals are perfect. But it wasn't individualism that killed 100 million people in the 20th century, that happened because of collectivism.

[macpacheco]

Let me try to guess why dont we hear anything about Fukushima anymore (nuclear plant still leaking - disaster much worse than Chernobyl):

The reason we don't hear much about Fukushima is the situation is under control. Leakage of some radioactive materials into the ocean is orders of magnitude less than the millions of tons of lead that we threw into the ocean over the last 3000 yrs (starting with the Romans).
Healthy risks due to radioactivity just a mile from the plant are less than health risks due to downtown Tokyo pollution. Yet nuclear is punished with overzealous safety standards, while we tolerate high pollution levels.
The post accident handling of the Fukushima disaster was extremely well done. Per the usual, all predictions made by the anti nuclear alarmists are proving to be wrong every day.
Notice Chernobyl was predicted to kill one million people, then they reduced it to two hundred thousand deaths.
Three Mile Island was predicted to kill many people can cause thousands of cancers, it killed zero people and zero cases of cancer were linked to TMI, since radioactive leakage was insignificant.
Please properly inform you self about the real risks of radiation. It's everywhere. Our own body produces half a million radioactivity disintegrations per minute (like billions per month). Our bodies are more radioactive than the environment around us. Even "deadly" gamma radiation is produced by our own bodies, as well as beta radiation (high energy electrons and positrons).
Please cleanse yourself from all Hollywood anti radiation BS. It's all garbage designed to maximize sensationalism and 100% divorced from facts. Same think for green peace (and related groups) nuclear alarmism.

[a user]

Notice Chernobyl was predicted to kill one million people, then they reduced it to two hundred thousand deaths.

i do not know where you took that claims (claim 1 the prediction, claim to the actually number of deaths due to Tscher-
nobyl) but it is wrong.

this is a german study on that matter (the other in english i didn't found fast enough, i digged into that matter a few years ago) but the actual number of deaths is far higher. and the only reason why it didn't got any higher was that they very fast evacuated a large area around it.

the number of increased cases of various cancers also increased.

but what is even more scarying is the fact, that the official comitees to analyze the consequences (e.g. IAE and WHO) actually have very contradicting and doubtfull numbers. overall it seems that no one actually wanted to make the actual extend of the consequences to be known, which are as of research of various independend institutes far higher than the official numbers.

[macpacheco]

i do not know where you took that claims (claim 1 the prediction, claim to the actually number of deaths due to Tscher-
nobyl) but it is wrong.

this is a german study on that matter (the other in english i didn't found fast enough, i digged into that matter a few years ago) but the actual number of deaths is far higher. and the only reason why it didn't got any higher was that they very fast evacuated a large area around it.

the number of increased cases of various cancers also increased.

but what is even more scarying is the fact, that the official comitees to analyze the consequences (e.g. IAE and WHO) actually have very contradicting and doubtfull numbers. overall it seems that no one actually wanted to make the actual extend of the consequences to be known, which are as of research of various independend institutes far higher than the official numbers.

Fact 1 - Radiation levels both on Fukushima and Chernobyl are bellow those of either grand central station and St Peter Square (heavy alpha radiation from thousands of tons of granite).
Fact 2 - People are back living just a few miles from the Chernobyl reactor site. They say they have no cancers.
Fact 3 - Chernobyl is not a useful realistic accident moving forward. It will never happen again (a reactor spewing 5% of its core radioactive materials into the air)
Fact 4 - Chernobyl was a textbook case of utterly incompetent medical services in close proximity to a nuclear station
Important Question - If Fukushima was such a serious radioactive release, then where are the cancers and death due to Fukushima radiation ?

There are a lot of non scientifical anti nuclear studies out there. As well as there are lots of doctors unwilling to accept a few basic hard facts about radiation.
I'm presenting a course from a reputable US university on the subject (Pittsburgh University). The instructor is a PhD on nuclear engineering. What is your source ?
If you'd like you can still attend the same online class I did (specially download all videos and lectures if you don't have the time to go through them right now).

https://class.coursera.org/nuclearscience-002

Some people have made up their minds and are not open to a rational discussion. Please educate yourself on the subject.

[toyotabedzrock]

Did he mean to say anarchy? It seemed to be randomly placed. And the world wont become nice, laws are needed to restrain and harness business people. Yes it is a restraint they feel is oppressive but if the rules are clear ahead of time and they know that the democracy can not be bought to change the rules you can make capitalism useful.

Its word remembering that capitalism is not useful unless everyone is helped by a controlled partial redistribution. We it becomes unrestrained it is better called fascism.

[storm_st]

you brought up Nazism

You say that, not me.

I am just fed up reading 70+year old copy paste from that anti-USSR propaganda. We all know relation of Ford and German military machine that bring nothing but death to my country, all that hand waving about second front. We still remember what civilian west have done here, it barely few percent families that not touched of that, almost zero.

[TheBlackCat]

Individuals clean up their own lives naturally.

No, they can clean up their own lives naturally, but they often don't. We have a significant number of people in the U.S. right now that won't use energy-saving lightbulbs solely because they see it as associated with the wrong political party.

[Fenrin]

The reason we don't hear much about Fukushima is the situation is under control. Leakage of some radioactive materials into the ocean is orders of magnitude less than the millions of tons of lead that we threw into the ocean over the last 3000 yrs (starting with the Romans).
[...]

it surely depends on where we get the news we read, if we hear issues at Fukushima or not. Claiming that such articles are "Hollywood anti radiation" propaganda is too easy. Every main stream media is somehow biased. In the western countries MSM has to be compatible with the investors opinions, and with political ethics they present. It is common that Journalist and authors of news agencies and publishers have to sign such ethics contracts when they begin their job.

In other countries like Russia the agenda of the MSM is more depend on the government, and much less on big corporations.

so just a recent example from Russia Today, about the situation at the Fukushima plant:
http://rt.com/news/fukushima-embarra...tive-leak-332/

[Fenrin]

Overpopulation is an actual problem. We all agree mass murder is not the solution, but someone needs to do something, and politicians are not going to limit the numer of births because no one would vote them. The Earth as we know it is condemned if the population continues to grow as it grows nowadays.

Overpopulation will be an issue especially, if our society keeps to be economy growth and consumerism centered.

I think in the next decades this could change. A more drastic oppression of the crowd by the elite might be a reality in the not very far future; police states and a bigger debt crisis will surely make this possible. The gap between rich-poor will surely continue to raise. Perhaps more people will escape the mainstream society in smaller self-sustaining communities.