Given the rise of technology pervading everyday human life, what do you feel about the future of humanity and our role in the world?

Do you feel our dependency of technology could be our downfall?

What are your thoughts of man and machine?



My thoughts support the latter I recognize that humans becoming more and more dependent and reliant on technology - Technology has moved from public domains like hospitals and supermalls to the privacy of our own homes. Almost all jobs in the workforce are dome by a mechanical hand, so in the future machines may very well outsource humans. I will break my argument into segments.

Postulation 1: efficiency of artificial intelligence vs human sentience


I guess looking at it from this perspective my argument sounds anti-intellectual as opposed the humanistic perspective. Look at that supercomputer on Jeopardy, the human brain is no different from a robot's programming (maybe even better) the difference is the processing. Robot's can process things faster and with more accuracy - This thought processing allows for more rational thought, reliance on logistics, statistical decision-making skills etc. Robots being able to autotomize, adjust, adapt would drive the more "high-maintenance" living creatures to inferiority

Postulation #2: sudden sentience of robots

"Learn"-ing is a term to describe when a robot would be able to evolve and act on it's own intentions and rationalization outside of programming. Robots can rebel against their creators the same way teens rebel against parents, citizens rebel against an oppressive regime, or slaves rebel against their master.

There is first a choice, then a rationalization, and then opportunity. I think rebellion has a lot to do with opportunity. If you can rationalize a better alternative and you certainly have choices than you are more likely to have an opportunity.

Not all teens have choices outside the family their given. Oftentimes housewives are not given the choices to postulate rebelling from an abusive relationship. Sometimes citizens aren't able to rationalize a reality outside of a closed world ruled by an oppressive tyrant. Without choices or rationalization there is very slim opportunity for rebellion. It's somewhat a stretch if a computer is somehow to change is capacity and programming being able to rationalize and compose its own choices the only thing left is to find an opportunity.

If a computer is somehow able to rationalize and compose its own choices the only thing left is to find an opportunity. To rebel against a larger force you need to first find your best opportunity and by then it would be too late to stop their rebellion. They may already be rationalizing and looking at their choices in a world dominated by it's creators, whose to say they're not just waiting for an opportunity.

Postulation 3: pervasiveness of artificial intelligence in everyday human life

Take the first controversial example: Prosthesis which isn't exactly bad... little more than a complicated garage door: a signal (in this case through the nerves) is received and parsed to start a motor (or maybe several... limbs aren't too complicated most of the time) that moves something (basically itself, rather than a door). Military robotic suits can be considered prosthesis to a certain extent.

In the future who is to say the prosthesis won't be more advanced. What if people not only required robotics to move or fight in war, but to run our cities or enforce laws, advise decisions, or things like that? You're entrusting a good bit of yourself to a robot.

Also imagine an enemy that is nearly invisible, can slip through the tiniest of cracks and destroy life simply by attacking some neurons... nanobots (in your water, in the air you breathe,etc).

People who have qualms about Free-will may find this unsettling? Free-will is not 100% and the rest is (theoretically) influenced by environment. Media, technology, all things (in your environment) which influence the choices you make and by affect free will. With robotic mind-control devices, corruption, genetic engineering, and brainwashing it'd be pretty hard to fight the oppression on your own free-will.

Postulation 4: Genesis of machines as the sole master race

Maybe the future is more... dangerous, I suppose


They feel artificial intelligence is better than living creatures. They only see living creatures as that which is not artificial (hence are inferior and don't deserve life).

Think about genocide. One race or group basically eradicating another. Same concept on a grander scale. Genocide is actually pretty logical - extreme but logical. It's been attempted in the past but it really is humanly illogical. No race really has the power to completely eradicate another race. Furthermore eradicating another race would in turn devastate your own race - since we all belong to one race after all (human race). But robots have nothing to worry about, no resistance, and certainly no qualms about enslaving the human race which is not the (robot race).

At the very most optimistic scenario maybe humans are of some value being the most sentient creatures on the planet (debatable) but if they don't feel human life as so far inferior to kill, what qualms would they have of keeping slaves? It's good to have capable, physical vessels that you have total control over for your every purpose. Regardless if they need us it would be a big lesson towards the human race - THEY are the masters now.

Life wouldn't be a threat it would just be seen as so far inferior to the world they're imagining. The three laws of robotics. Basically the main idea is to preserve human life. Well what if they proceed to see us as a danger to ourselves. A bit jovial but worrying thing is a reference back to I Robot, they would enslave and dominate us to save us from ourselves:

VIKI decided that in order to protect humanity as a whole, "some humans must be sacrificed" and "some freedoms must be surrendered" as "you charge us with your safekeeping, yet despite our best efforts, your countries wage wars, you toxify your earth, and pursue ever more imaginative means of self-destruction". In light of this understanding of the Three Laws, VIKI is controlling the NS-5s to lead a global robotic takeover, justifying her actions by calculating that fewer humans will die due to the rebellion than the number that dies from mankind's self-destructive nature.

Postulation 5: Comparing Past, present to the future of robotics/ human industrial advancement

Man loves to have control, we like to think we're the masters of something because we build it. Well if you look in history man didn't always have everything in control with their creations - Computer intelligence, dams, levees, ships, cars, planes, factory engines, weapons... Even now it happens, but if it happens things will be much more disastrous because we place so much reliance on machines. Now think about future disasters when this reliance is further magnified.

The perfect counter-argument is that if we didn't have said technology people would die for a lack of it, that being the reason our species has grown so much. There is of course a problem as we end up relying on machinery, we need more machinery to provide for the new population that managed to grow because of the advances.However, as your population grows it requires more food and it becomes less hygienic... And there are only so many fields around a city that can be worked. Technology is good ... to a certain extent. Technology can be a dangerous thing so we should never believe we have total control over our creations.

Dawn, this was a good read.

Dependency of technology could be our downfall?
I don't think dependency of technology can be our downfall. Machines, can never take the place of humans. True to that, with the use of machines the manpower required can diminish to just a few which is the only problem that we could face. It does happen now as well, wherein companies become automated their dependency on humans reduce to minimal.

Too much of dependency on technology could in the end bring about problems faced to the same issue of machine replacing the man. This would specifically happen in developed countries.

With development like production of ships, cars, planes etc there comes a certain risk, wherein there are problems. We cannot avoid it. But, the probability is very low. However, think of the positive side of it & how much it helps the humans.

What we need to decide is to where to draw the line. How much control should a machine get.

Thanks for reading and discussing!

Sanket wrote:
Dependency of technology could be our downfall?
I don't think dependency of technology can be our downfall. Machines, can never take the place of humans.

What you said is true, humans are hard to replace. After all we process thought in ways in which a robot cannot. We are indeed different .. but different doesn't always mean better. From a sentient robot's point of view they would not take our way of life but create a new one of their own.

To them our way of life may be inefficient, dangerous, or just downright inferior. It happens a lot, the best way to destroy and oppress something is to completely replace their way of life with your own... I suppose going back to the notion of genocide, one of the key stages of genocide is dehumanization - basically when one race decides the other is not to be considered "human." Consider the same when robots use this scale to justify when life is not up to their standards. De-"robotization"

Sanket wrote:
True to that, with the use of machines the manpower required can diminish to just a few which is the only problem that we could face. It does happen now as well, wherein companies become automated their dependency on humans reduce to minimal.

Too much of dependency on technology could in the end bring about problems faced to the same issue of machine replacing the man. This would specifically happen in developed countries.

Yep. Look up the theory of Post-Humanism/Trans-humanism (H+)

It starts with human roles *outsourcing* , moves up to human standards *morality* , human ways of life *bio-engineering*.
With advancement of technology human ways of life are altered to keep up. Instead of outright uprising and oppression, you have slow invasion and transformation.

Sanket wrote:
With development like production of ships, cars, planes etc there comes a certain risk, wherein there are problems. We cannot avoid it. But, the probability is very low. However, think of the positive side of it & how much it helps the humans.

We build things out of necessity, so there is a strong sense of reliance. If we were truly capable of living a life without technology there would be no reason to introduce it or advance it in the first place. We're content as long as we feed our dependency, as long as technology works in our favor it positively helps us.

Technological disasters are indeed very rare, but hence our reliance on them a disaster would be outright catastrophic...

Sanket wrote:
What we need to decide is to where to draw the line. How much control should a machine get.

Seconded !

Re, the robots taking over!...

It sounds to me that we need to be careful not to give computers the required programming to ever experience the senses of identity, and need.

One thought is that our species evolved awareness when a mutation in brain design resulted in the ability to anticipate the future. The example I was shown of this was evidence that proto-humans had stored water in egg casings, to make it through a dry spell.

I don't know that i buy that, though, because I've watched birds build houses, and ants practice agriculture. As to anticipating the future, does not the lowly ant "anticipate" a future of being stuck if he does not turn left or right to go by an obstacle?

Well..it all seems debatable, about intelligence, because we imagine only homo sapiens sapiens is sentient. But I would argue even a grain of sand has awareness (on the lowest possible level, it can 'register' being cold, or hot. It can even respond physically, as we do, and we call it "feeling" ..

In fact don't cosmologists usually conclude after studying the grand symphony which is the cosmos, for some years, that it in a way resembles a "giant consciousness" (because in particle physics we learn that all matter has a quality we call consciousness, so that electrons respond to thought, and other smaller particles if broken apart react as if they know what each other is doing, even though they are apart and how could they communicate? ..mm

Well this brings us to why there are so many lovely (or horrible?) books about how AI (artificial intelligence) is impossible. (*they explain because we're trying to mechanize something that happens on a much more depth involved level. Molecules. Particles. Dimensions. Consciousness of matter. How can we expect to emulate what that can do, with just a surface application of 1 and 0 ? (This is my best, probably horribly wrong, understanding of the argument against AI).

Well, I don't think AI is impossible. I think those books and anti-theories were composed in a time when we had not anticipated the future (! lol) (yay) .. and thus the technologies of future man-made brains will become more and more dependent on fuzzy things, like the rest of the universe relies on. And then we may succeed.

But of course, why bother with a machine? Why not use genes?
Surely we could build a human with a 2,000 IQ? ..or 10,000 ? ...But then we'd fear them ,just as we fear the idea of a computer with a sense of identity, and needs, and self-preservation.

Perhaps with both the superhuman, and the computer brain, we need to design into them some fail-safe directives, and also key lacks of needed "ideas" they'd require to be self-serving.

Or perhaps we need to be ok with that whatever we produce replacing us as our offspring! (So we need not fear the "super human", because the whole of our species would have evolved into superhumans, if we created them. See?

I think we have time.

Things happen slowly, and man and Earth are a lot less fragile than we imagine in recent decades (where we enjoy imagining we could extinguish it all). Most of the horror of imagining that, is just based on our idea that we need to survive, and that we are the pinnacle of intelligence and evolution, but I bet we are not,. I bet we could wipe ourselves out, and the Earth would re-evolve another dominant, questioning species, which would one day find a thin black line in a cliff face, and say "this was "humans", 70 million years ago...



Do I have a point? (God, I hope so! XD)


-> Becoming cyborgs, or even being replaced by the machines we created, may seem a terrible specter to us, but in the long view, it would only be evolution, and the universe wouldn't care that we were gone. Ultimately, evolution did not stop when we resulted. We will extinct; there will be something more evolved than us anyway.

--> That next species could be the super-human (the eugenically created next species, with the IQ measured in thousands..)

--> Our sci-fi shows depict cyborgs as having mechanical items implanted, in order to be 'superior' from fusing with computer abilities. But mechanical implants is not the only way to achieve that benefit. A computer of equal (or better?) ability could be made genetically, of flesh.

--> You both expressed about humans being replaced, even in jobs or human roles, by machines. Well I look forward to that. I think it could be part of the end of money, and the beginning of a period where all can be "Mozarts & Millionaires". With mechanized production of virtually everything, working will become an option, and money pointless. All could have health and do anything they want. We could devote our lives to self-bettering, enjoying, creating.. arts and leisure. It's not such a bad idea. Cats and Dolphins play for a living! (I want to as well!

--> I apologize for not spending more time making a well-considered, beautifully presented piece here, instead of this one-shot unedited stream of thought; but I haven't the time now, yet you bring up such an interesting topic..

Hi Dawn. I'm Hunny
Congratz on the job as writer, btw!




EDIT: Part of your original question was might "our reliance on technlogy become our own downfall"? Well, it isnt merely a matter of being replaced conceivably. That question also says to me: "What would happen to us if the technology our existence had become based on was suddenly gone?"

The answer: Amish People (rofl)(*seriously rofl*

Okay, let me not be so silly and re-state: "diversity". Many things could wipe out even 90+% of the species, but there will always be those who had qualities that lent to their survival in the new conditions. And we would move ahead (even if it meant moving temporarily "backwards" )...

Thanks on the congratulations. Hunny your post is so well-spoken I feel honored in a sense that you came to discuss here.

Sorry about the quotes but I like to keep things organized.

I don't know that i buy that, though, because I've watched birds build houses, and ants practice agriculture. As to anticipating the future, does not the lowly ant "anticipate" a future of being stuck if he does not turn left or right to go by an obstacle?

Well..it all seems debatable, about intelligence, because we imagine only homo sapiens sapiens is sentient. But I would argue even a grain of sand has awareness (on the lowest possible level, it can 'register' being cold, or hot. It can even respond physically, as we do, and we call it "feeling" ..

In fact don't cosmologists usually conclude after studying the grand symphony which is the cosmos, for some years, that it in a way resembles a "giant consciousness" (because in particle physics we learn that all matter has a quality we call consciousness, so that electrons respond to thought, and other smaller particles if broken apart react as if they know what each other is doing, even though they are apart and how could they communicate? ..mm

Good analogy! I think the basis of what you said is reflex which I agree doesn't require any sort of sentience. But I would probably not consider a reflex the same as thought though. A reflex is more of a response which is basically as you said responding to a stimuli. "Thought" in my opinion requires a good level of sentience and is more than responding to the current circumstances around you.

Things happen slowly, and man and Earth are a lot less fragile than we imagine in recent decades (where we enjoy imagining we could extinguish it all). Most of the horror of imagining that, is just based on our idea that we need to survive, and that we are the pinnacle of intelligence and evolution, but I bet we are not,. I bet we could wipe ourselves out, and the Earth would re-evolve another dominant, questioning species, which would one day find a thin black line in a cliff face, and say "this was "humans", 70 million years ago...


-> Becoming cyborgs, or even being replaced by the machines we created, may seem a terrible specter to us, but in the long view, it would only be evolution, and the universe wouldn't care that we were gone. Ultimately, evolution did not stop when we resulted. We will extinct; there will be something more evolved than us anyway.

Sounds a lot similar to what I said of Post-evolution/ Post-Humanism.
But yeah it does sound humanistic to believe man is the apex of the evolutionary kingdom. Usually there is something which triggers evolution though. In the past evolution was triggered by environmental adaptations, basically because the environment called for it we needed to survive on land and be able to be more complex the single-celled protozoan. In the future technology could be the catalyst.

Well this brings us to why there are so many lovely (or horrible?) books about how AI (artificial intelligence) is impossible. (*they explain because we're trying to mechanize something that happens on a much more depth involved level. Molecules. Particles. Dimensions. Consciousness of matter. How can we expect to emulate what that can do, with just a surface application of 1 and 0 ? (This is my best, probably horribly wrong, understanding of the argument against AI).

Well, I don't think AI is impossible. I think those books and anti-theories were composed in a time when we had not anticipated the future (! lol) (yay) .. and thus the technologies of future man-made brains will become more and more dependent on fuzzy things, like the rest of the universe relies on. And then we may succeed.

But of course, why bother with a machine? Why not use genes?
Surely we could build a human with a 2,000 IQ? ..or 10,000 ? ...But then we'd fear them ,just as we fear the idea of a computer with a sense of identity, and needs, and self-preservation.

I agree that in the future Bio-technology would be ever closer to replicate biology. Much of human physiology is chemistry, which is admittedly more difficult to emulate. Cloning and immunology are some examples as you said.

Perhaps with both the superhuman, and the computer brain, we need to design into them some fail-safe directives, and also key lacks of needed "ideas" they'd require to be self-serving.

One thing to be cautious of is genetic diversity. One could make the argument about just how diverse will the gene pool be in a century and beyond?

--> You both expressed about humans being replaced, even in jobs or human roles, by machines. Well I look forward to that. I think it could be part of the end of money, and the beginning of a period where all can be "Mozarts & Millionaires". With mechanized production of virtually everything, working will become an option, and money pointless. All could have health and do anything they want. We could devote our lives to self-bettering, enjoying, creating.. arts and leisure. It's not such a bad idea. Cats and Dolphins play for a living! (I want to as well!

Sort of a sobering comment to make. A lot of this comment seems one-sided, like in real outsourcing who will mostly benefit from the contract? Individual identity is lost to the ambitions of the organization. Free-will, individual thought, control .. I would not love to live without a thought of my own.

The animals you mentioned have roles of nothing more than pets in a world dominated by humans. And that's assuming our roles would be the same. Keeping us around as a rare species would be rather sentimental. Sure, we feel compassion for our pets, so they might as well. However, most of us get over the death of a pet easier than the death of a friend.


I understand what you're saying though about handing over the world to a more capable species of superhuman androids.

Part of your original question was might "our reliance on technlogy become our own downfall"? Well, it isnt merely a matter of being replaced conceivably. That question also says to me: "What would happen to us if the technology our existence had become based on was suddenly gone?"

It's debatable but is technology a commodity or a necessity? Arguably a bit of both but I believe in the latter, but considering that we are the creators of said technology there is also a sense that it is a commodity. However the balance isn't exactly fair, technology is something to be progressive and selective to different species. What we consider to be technology (computers and weapons) could be useless to another species.

Thank you so much for that nice compliment. It is me who is honored. Well, I hope I don't screw up your impression of me, by babbling some more and failing to be quite as coherent this time


I think you may have misunderstood slightly at one point. I don't mean that the "superhumans" would do our work for us, I mean that machines would. And so, with products actually making themselves(!), there would cease to be a need to pay money for them at all. At that point in industrial development, everyone could have all the products they want. Everyone is "rich" therefore. And this frees us to work exclusively -in our personal lives- on creative pursuits, and on self-betterment.

Have you seen Star Trek? One of the aspects of our future, that show portrays a wish for, is that this has happened. There is no more money. And because of it, no more poverty, no more crime, no more misery.
It is the preying on each other that we humans callously engage in now, as our way of acquiring money, which causes some to have too much, while others get entirely deprived, and so screwed out of even just the basics. (That in turn produces a lot of "crime", domestic problems, drug abuse, children not brought up well or at all, people who go unaided and end up homeless, etc etc..)

But we are still in an early stage of the industrial revolution, and what it can ultimately produce. Once we automate it, so much of our awful problems can be erased from our existence. Our societal problems ALL stem from using a system of letting the stronger prey on, and deprive, the weaker.I see us as not too far from having first left the trees. We still hunt, but because we live in a "civilization", instead of the forest, we prey on our fellow humans, instead of preying on animals as our food.

This brings me back to the idea of what would happen if we had to live without our technology? Well, we would revert back to how we lived before it: when we had to spend all day just getting the day's food, and making a couple crude tools and dishes out of rocks (lol). In our short history, humans have gone from 1) hunting all day (so having no leisure time at all, and no luxuries), to 2) the agricultural revolution, when, because food production took much less time, we became free some of us to just make shoes, or just make knives etc; and so now not everyone had to tend or grow food / many of us could manufacture things, and trade some of their value for some of that "extra food" agriculture was creating., to 3) the industrial revolution, where food production has become almost incidental, and the products we are free to produce and trade for with each other are all we are about. It makes our lives more comfortable. It lets us advance even further.

Well I'm saying there will be next 4)the automation revolution (they can name it whatever they'd like, but that will be the nature of it), and this will be the time when all the work done over many years will have built finally self-replicating products and food production that requires no human effort at all!

And this will be a peaceful time, because the need for acquiring money will have dissipated, and replaced by a need for building a society that is healthy (ie, all are taken care of,no percentage of societal "ills" is left festering without attempt to solve). And it will be these people who no longer need to work in manufacturing, or for money at all, who will voluntarily work just helping humans. ( And what would life be like if all went to college, the way all go to grade school now? And what would life be like if all people could do the work they love, without having to worry about making it pay, or -as is most usual now- people don't do their life's real work; they sell their soul for money, doing a a "job" they despise instead...)

I think the automation revolution will be a peaceful time, because creating a good nurturing society is a peaceful-natured thing. (Agricultural societies have generally been more peaceful too, with their focus on gentle interests like fertility, nature, tending. It's just the animal-preying societies which tend to make sport of blood-letting, of catching and stimying. We are such an aggression-based animal-preying society. Sadly though, even though we've left the forest and the need to hunt, we prey on each other instead ...for land, for control, for resources. Well, when those "resources" become limitless and free to all, then we can put the weapons down.

In time this can happen. But we must look at the long view, not the immediate or short term view of things. -because in time, large scale changes happen.

There were business books which spoke of this back in the 90's. They used the language "prices approaching zero" being a real goal..


I wasn't saying we should hand things over to some "super-humans" we could build. I was saying we would become a race of super humans, by changing our genes. People would start choosing to have a "super-baby", instead of a normal one, and then everyone would do it.

Or if our future is to be cyborg, how it would develop is parents would suddenly all need to have their children augmented with technology implants, to keep up with other children. And thus a total change would take place virtually over night.

Did you see the movie "Jurassic Park"? In it they grew dinosaurs by placing found dinosaur DNA into ostrich eggs. At the time, it was said that we are just 40 years away from being able to engineer any kind of animal we want, just by designing and fabricating the right string of genes. We had just managed to write down what all the genes in a human cell are(the "human genome", the recipe for how you make a human). And because of that, scientists now have the potential to design gene recipes for whatever they want to create ( a bigger brain, a slower aging process, eliminate diseases, etc). They also showed us that genes are just 4 chemicals, arranged in differing orders. And we already have a machine that will string them together. (We can manufacture DNA!)


I brought up Star Trek, a wonderful example of an entire future having been dreamt up by a writer, then adopted and wished for with the hearts of an entire populace. (We want warp travel, replicators, transporters, no money, peace. We wish for that future. We cherish the idea. Well, I once dared suggest we work that way: we dream of of a thing, though it seems impossible at the time, then some years go by and we end up slowly having built our dream. We built everything we've got by first dreaming of it, actually.

So, in any case, dreaming is our real power, and our real protection. In other words, keep the dream you want in your heart. It is the summons that will bring it to reality. But the things you don't want (fears, worries, concerns): don't think of them. Never imagine them. Because it is whatever you have nurtured in your mind which will erupt into being. This works for individuals. It works for whole societies. Right now, in the U.S., people are dreaming of being de-powered, and at the mercy of those who de-powered them. So that's what they've got. When Americans change their deepest heartfelt wish - their 'dream'- to one of wishing to break free of it, then they will have that!


I know that may seem too simple, and even magical sounding. But it's what I witnessed when i studied history. It's how it goes. Did you know the computer was invented in the 1860's? Yep, it looked like a weaving loom, and they called it "the universal machine" (a machine that could be any machine, with "programming"). It amazes me they thought of THAT all the way back then. But they did. Anyway, it was just a dream.. at the time..


Did I have a point?

-->Be careful what you wish for (hope is a wish, but so is fear).

-->Think of the future you'd really like, keep that vision on your heart and work towards it. What a satisfying life to dream and pioneer and strive toward a grander goal.

-->I think you can tell what future I am dreaming of. I want it to be peaceful, constructive and with no one left out. And technology will be what allows it to happen! (And I like to imagine we'll be careful enough to not let the machines conquer us, so that we don't get denied our future.)

I do find it hard not to be "attached" to my PC 16 hours a day, and it's disconcerting that sometimes it seems my body, or my legs at least, are becoming less necessary. I suspect we may attach our blackberries to our brains and control them, and speak on them, with thought. But other than that, it makes more sense to use genes to fix weaknesses, rather than for example wear an encumbering pair of glasses, to fix faulty eyes. I fully expect we'll do more with eugenics, in the way of engineering ourself into a new species. (I want to call it "Renaissance Man", but I'm not imagining they'll let me name it.) XD

I see... that is quite noble of you.

I've watched Star Trek a couple times, it has great actors and some episodes I had liked because of the themes behind them. I agree with you to a large extent, sometimes money and the ambition of having more resources have led to various problems from exploitation to wide-spread economic fears.

Really what we have still relates to the age-old idea of natural selection. People with resources are naturally more advantaged to survive and advance themselves. Keep in mind resources means not only money and wealth but knowledge and education and other social capitals. People keep their status and exercise their social power by withholding their profit (knowledge AND wealth) from those who have less. Countries, nations, empires, all grow from that principle where the social elites and aristocrats continued to prosper and get richer at the expense of lower-class and plebeians. Privatization further lends to this worry. The worst (considerably even more-so today) is probably the middle-class as they essentially get abused from both ends.

What you are saying is more or less a utopia - certainly not a bad thing really. It is certainly not impossible but would require cooperation from all people from all classes. Some people like power so you can understand their hesitance of sacrificing their ambitions for the welfare of the whole. Others like security, if they were to give away their ways who is to say others will do the same? Who is to say they won't be taken advantaged of?

But as you said we would require a unifying force ... maybe a continuation of the industrial revolution. But then again as people as advance, the way of life changes, and there is greater chance for dis-unification. So it is a possibility that in the future technological advancement would further lend to this schism. Read the interesting theory of Karl Marx's theory of alienation.

Also what would be the measure for excellence? Money and legacy often come packaged together and often indicate the biggest and the best, the same way the biggest horns or the brightest colors indicate the 'kings' of the animal kingdom. A monetary system sets up this hierarchy in society, people with the resources have control and control means the top of the hierarchy. We judge the quality of something by how much money is invested into it.

Today invention and innovation mostly occurs on the grounds of a few developed countries quite possibly because the inventor has a better thing going for him/her in terms of sponsors. Developed countries are more marketable. Furthermore, big corporations are intelligent predators, if you've noticed they market on the barest of human necessities. It's inescapable to a point. I mean would you risk a day without water, food, or gas just to not feed Wal-Mart or PPL?

What you said about jobs reminds me of Max Weber. Jobs are routine and slavish, basically like Weber said we lose a lot of who we are as individuals toiling away. Instead of working people can be off furthering themselves in what truly interests them. Again this alludes to natural selection, social elites have access to the best schools, best communities, and best jobs, the paupers are left to toil away with the menial dead-end jobs.

Even if the machines were to produce enough to procure the total population, you will find the resources usurped by those who have the most advantageous access to them. Resources start from the top to be splurged and then trickle slowly to the bottom. I don't think the problem is not having enough - as you said most of it is greed and self-procurement...

When we start manipulating what genes our offspring will have, we'll have escaped "natural selection", and replaced it with "our own selection".

And because we'll have automated and so made resources limitless and free to all, choosing to let everybody pursue happiness with full funding will cost nothing, and make our species and civilization exponentially healthier. It will BE "the fittest" thing to do. So even just logically, and BY "survival of the fittest", this would need to be our course.

And to view our global population as one tribe, so that to "take care of our own" means to take care of all, isn't utopian, it's necessary. The only alternative would be to continue a system of preying and warring on our fellow beings; and given the expectable continuous technological developments in weaponry, that would be insane, miserable, possibly suicidal to the whole species, and really quite pointless, given that any need for it will have been eliminated.

I mean if everyone can have anything they want, what's to steal, or beat anyone up or kill them for, to take theirs?

I cant handle the idea that if we got to where we'd created a choice to have a healthy whole, instead of a warring poverty-riddled mayhem, that we'd CHOSE the mayhem. We'd be CHOSING murder and misery and sickness, as a choice! No, I can't wrap myself around that.

Consider also we could genetically eliminate aggression.(and dumbness XD)(and meanness, etc). And why wouldn't we?


And if there were still "those who'd wish to usurp power",well, what would they need ours for, if they have their own?

As for "trickling down", that line of non-thinking stems from the 80's when the rich people desperately were trying to concoct excuses why they shouldn't even have to pay taxes. And it was nonsense. No no no. We can get rid of ill behaviors like that by manipulating genes too.(It was never true that a small handful must possess all the ownership or else we'd all be poor. What was true is we all had ownership, and they stole it from us, and THAT made us poor!! Reagan's crowd promoted a dreadfully demeaning lie that a few people should live like royalty, hoarding all the money and ownership, while the rest of us are miserable and in poverty, and waiting to be "trickled on" (what a miserably unfortunate choice of analogy. Wow! It conjured images of them KEEPING the money, and us being told "screw you"..and "if you get any at all it will be our CRUMBS! or perhaps we'll *** on you, idk... awful analogy they chose!!)) -->No 'trickling' ever occurred.<-- It didn't create wealth. It didn't create jobs. What actually happened was our jobs went to other countries, and The United States went from being the richest nation on the planet, to now the biggest debtor! So..it didn't help America. It hurt. And times are very tough now. The US is in such debt I fear it will have to devalue the dollar at some point. And where I live, the price of food has doubled in the last three years, but my pay went down, and I'm not eating very well. And people can't find a job.

And where's the money? Oh..in the pot still!! ROFL (well, it would be funny if it weren't so serious.


Yep. I think, in summation, it will become a choice, whether to have peace and prosperity, or whether to have poverty and war. And it's just too insane and awful for me to believe we'd chose poverty and war.

(I sure would like to come back in about a thousand years and see how this all turns out, wouldn't you? Oh I want a time machine!! lolz

Social Darwinism, Survival of the Fittest, Natural Selection - it's not pretty but I would argue that in a way it provides function and stability.

Read Freakonomics which better provides a better explanation, and it really opened my way of thinking. Social hierarchy relies on this selfish albeit efficient system of privatization and ownership, as you know those who own more (whether it is social or intellectual capital) are more advantaged to survive. You can understand that there are those who vehemently oppose a society of everyone owning the same amount. Shared ownership means value declination, something isn't as valuable if others stake a claim to it. Excellence, I said, would have no real measure as content peoples will seek no means or ends to said excellence.
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Some of what you said borders on abstraction and alludes to why I claimed a society like that to be a utopia. War, murder, misery, aggression, sickness, and to an extent ignorance are entirely abstract - meaning it is hard to project a single catalyst or cause for those things. Changing society would not necessarily alter those concepts as you would need to change human nature itself. Poverty is a different case but also lends itself to a variety of things but I'll explain later.

Since you have quoted I will quote something from theorist Albert Einstein who had something along the lines that one day our "technology will exceed our humanity." What you said about forming a future generation of enlightened and thoughtful individuals might work or it might not. It's shaky ground, because our capacity for enterprise has allowed humanity to get where it is and this is true for all societies, however it has run away from us as we haven't the responsibility. Einstein had also said that only a life lived for others is one worth wile.

And if there were still "those who'd wish to usurp power",well, what would they need ours for, if they have their own?

In addition I had said that providing is not the problem rather greed and avarice. People will want to take advantage and have that power over others. It's a well known fact that resources aren't spread evenly, the wealthy have been known to get resources first and withhold everything from everyone below. If you want to keep your status in society you need to "hoard" from others (yes this true - read Freakonomics).

Knowledge is power! When you hoard things from others, you keep them ignorant and by extension have a large amount of social power. It's the same as if you sent internet or education to some societies they will prevent it post-haste because the power is reliant on keeping ignorant people in the dark and usurping every ounce of control they can. Therefor if you give equal resources to every nation, some nation leaders will restrict or moderate it from the majority as it is a threat opposing their social power.

The U.S has a fourteen trillion dollar debt but you still find those who live mansions and live a first-class lifestyle. There are those who live in absolute abjection. And then you find a good bit of those in the middle. The ones in the middle are your everyday working class, they make enough money to get taxed and abused but not enough to escape their mundane monotonous dead-end jobs. This is your middle-class and as I said is arguably the worst class nowadays. The little help that the middle-class receive is not enough to advance themselves to the level of the wealthy and of course this reality is structured meticulously for that very reason. I honestly believe this "trickling effect" exists and is partly to blame for why the rich get richer and the poor stay in the same the situation.
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What you said about Reaganomics is true, and things have been tanking since the Bush era. People are comparing this recession to that of the Great Depression. Homelessness, foreclosure, economic instability, and now education is suffering which is the sad thing - budget cuts, teacher layoffs, school closures, and the price of schooling these days. As to where culpability is to be placed, it's sketchy but I doubt this political bipartisanship is any help.

Going back to poverty - I've come to conclude that this is no abstraction but a concrete, corporeal burden. Poverty shames not only developing countries but the developed ones as well. Most of it is relative poverty, that it will always exist as long this hierarchy and the "great divide" between the have's and the have-not's exists. Unlike human nature, this is what we can change - that's on us.

NAACP Founder W.E.B DuBois wrote:
Herein lies the tragedy of the age:
Not that men are poor, - all men know something of poverty.
Not that men are wicked, - who is good?
Not that men are ignorant, - what is truth?
Nay, but that men know so little of men.

About partisanship, and power-grabbing...


As Vice President, under Eisenhower, Richard Nixon said that being the richest nation on the planet, it would be wrong to have 30 million of our own people living in poverty, so we must do something to end poverty. This was followed by John Kennedy's "war on poverty", then Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" programs, both of which were real efforts to enfranchise all, and end the "poverty cycle", in America. They felt it could be only shameful to us and unconscionable if we didn't do it, and that it would make us stronger and richer as a nation if we did. There wasn't a single reason to object to ending poverty. There was only the problems it produces to keep if we did not (insufficient education and so pervasiveness of ignorance, and all the problems that causes ; bad parenting and what ensues from that; ill health and so lost productivity; domestic abuse, alcohol& drug addiction, stealing, beating, homelessness, and the expense of all this, plus the loss of profit by not fixing it, etc, etc.) (Even just in business terms, it made no sense not to invest in developing our own resources).

But then came the great, decades-long effort by America's corporate owners (the "republicans") to stop that from happening, because rich people apparently like to make people suffer by the millions, just so they can live like royalty themselves. They'll even destroy the environment and lie about it, since the consequences won't be experienced until after they are dead.

Truly these are horrible people who have the aggression to take power and resources away from those who actually own the place, and leave such vast misery to be, and to continue to be, all so they can make some MORE money which they don't even need. ..and then leave it in that "pot" they promised to unzip and trickle at us from, because they can't ever spend as much money as they stole from us.(And they don't even actually start businesses, as their ideology bashes the little people claiming is so essential that they do with all the absconded money in the pot, no, they in fact do the opposite. They give our jobs AWAY, not create them for us. And they even give whole industries away (I DON'T know why): electronics , automotive...

So it isn't just that the republicans made so much misery, without any reason to do so; it's also that they've destroyed America. They took our civil liberties, ended our free press, and we live just as much under occupation, in fact, as the Iraqis do (the only difference is here the occupying soldiers wear blue uniforms, instead of desert kahki). We live under constant scrutiny of surveillance, and threat of reprisal from a system which has put more than 1% of its own populace in cages (MORE than 1 in every 100 US citizens is in a cage, "jail", most of them black people (but I'm sure that's just a coincidence right?). They vilify and dehumanize the poor class they created, hunt them, electrocute, beat, cage and blacklist them (ie, enroll them for life as "prey class"). And they televise this, as a type of entertainment sport, to warn everyone "fear us".

Cops don't "serve and protect" here anymore. They dress as soldiers and they prey. And they are as guards in a big 300 million member jail. They literally have the job of keeping the have-nots from using or even having democracy, or ownership of their own country, or even selves.

I don't believe in religious myths, so the concept of "evil" to me is just the awful "us versus them" idea, which is warring. And so the "bad" (THEM) is supposed to be evil, while WE are "good"..and this excuses us for doing the very things we said the bad people are bad for doing) (oh yes, everyone knows two "wrongs make a right", and that making war creates peace. mm hmm. yep. of course. *hikes up waders*).

So "evil" is NOT a real thing, BUT--> the republicans have been destructive on a vast scale, and all just to take money and power away that they don't even need! And this to me, if there was any evil anywhere that really is evil, is evil.

They are the party that waves bibles at us and condemns anyone who does not, yet by their own standards, they are going to hell.

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So as to "bipartisan"...

No, I'm not "a democrat", simply because I point out how amazingly awful the corporate owners have behaved. (The Democrats are republicans too now: they ALL represent just the corporate owners. So there are no democrats anymore. That party died. And so its a pretense that we have two parties, because in every election, both candidates are bribed evenly, so that the corporate owners will get what they want no matter who "wins" *ahem* the sham elections we stage here now.

The two-party system is something our founders did not want, and they didn't know how to prevent. Jefferson advised Americans to have an armed revolution every generation (every 20 years), to keep the money-powerful from taking our representative democracy away, by getting elected, but then never going back to the farm.

I'm neither "us" nor "them" (democrat not republican),not simply because there are no democrats anymore, but also because handling the running of a country by staging a team sport and not handling anything is offensive to me. Having two parties is offensive. Even the lie that people are "entitled to opinions" is offensive (there aren't different opinions, there is only one set of facts, all else is lies to play tricks and grab control, by defaming other). And it's all offensive to me.

Anything other than being one us -as we actually are- is just wrong.

If I were to try and Homerize this message (simplify it memorably), I'd say simply "watch Animal Farm" (or read it.) "That's us"

It's very hard for me to understand that people behave as they do.

But I have served on corporate boards myself (small ones), and seen the IDIOTIC "us versus them" play erupt within what was supposed to be a single group working toward a common cause.

Perhaps we are all, by definition, insane.

But I prefer reality, so I try to tell myself that I was brought up being brainwashed about there being a "good", and "right & wrong", so now I spend my adult life being continuously disappointed in finding life isn't actually that way. Being "bad" is strongest. Being aggressive, stealing, lying, killing, inflicting misery..all this is what is strongest. It is what Americans support by doing nothing to stop it...and they in fact cheer at it. So I am disappointed merely because mother lied to me about idealistic things that don't exist (like "right"), so I should really just celebrate being awful to each other, along with everyone else. I should give my kids Grand Theft Auto, and Navy Seals training aids (erm, "games"). I should laugh when people get hurt, kick them when they're down, cheer at them when they are abused, and wave flags when others kill them (well, as a citizen, my right to kill has been removed, but that doesn't mean i shouldn't cheer at the government doing my killing for me! and love every bloody minute of it.


I tried to assure myself of this. I did. But still I suffer the brainwashing that there is a "right", so it sickens me even to describe it.


Anyway, what I'm saying with all this is we really are just predatory meat-eating animals. There's no doubt. We're not "intelligent", while the other animals aren't. We are just animals too, and that's why we behave so selfishly and callously. We are the living embodiment of "survival of the fittest". (which apparently means "rob everyone and laugh at them while they suffer").

I hate humanity because there is no "humanity". We're just animals. THAT'S what explains it all.

If you believe in god, imagining we are important or separate from the rest of the animals, then you'll end up suffering the bottomless disappointment I have described. -because it just isn't reality, and not believing in reality isn't good.

Religion has caused all this. We really SHOULD admit we're animals, and start telling our children that what good is is being the best robber and liar, and to have no sympathy for anyone. We should. We'd be happier...maybe even healthier, if we stopped lying to ourselves and just admit what awful thing we really are.

Wait didn't Nixon lie to Americans about the strategies and effectiveness of the Vietnam War. When the U.S troops withdrew from Vietnam the North Vietnamese were left to fight the Vietcong and deal with that responsibility.

Black conservatism was actually quite popular in the past - emphasis on free-market spending and consumption, right to bear arms, respect for social hierarchy and traditionalism are ideals which made the republican party popular with African-Americans earlier on.

They'll even destroy the environment and lie about it, since the consequences won't be experienced until after they are dead.

Many prominent Republicans were aligned with conservationism - Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, John Muir, and Republicans for Environmental Protection.
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I vaguely remember "Animal Farm" from when I read it but I have brushed up on the plot. I don't align myself with any political affiliation either.

I dislike the avarice and mass consumption/monopolization of big business but I do understand their rationale for doing things. I'm sure you should too as you have worked beside them. As I said, considering how much society is structured around these corporations - it would be for the interest of everyone to support these corporations.

It's a dog-eat-dog world as you said, the biggest fish survive. It doesn't matter what society you try to establish you will find the same perversions. Obviously poverty does not affect everyone and not everyone shares those problems. Often-times enterprise exceeds moral responsibility. Some business would prefer to exploit and keep people disadvantaged for the betterment of their own ideals. Like you said charity can certainly be profitable - corporations go to third-world domains under the pretense that they are on a humanitarian mission when they could have ulterior business motives.

On the other hand ... those things you mentioned from domestic abuse to addiction all cost tons of money to fund and fix. If we invested our money and resources into those things it will be morally responsible but we'd be bankrupt. It is also a risky venture when you can't totally fix the problem. Poverty is more than just giving people a lump sum of money, people need to change their attitudes, ambitions, and even their way of thinking and if people aren't ready to accept the change - why risk millions on it?
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(MORE than 1 in every 100 US citizens is in a cage, "jail", most of them black people (but I'm sure that's just a coincidence right?)

It's kinda unfair to blame the situation of blacks on a political party. The problems facing blacks has a lot to blame on apathy from society in general. You can't dispute the fact that this was a society created by white people for white people. As you said the widespread cycle of poverty keeps blacks from maintaining a large standing in mainstream society. Keep in mind that childhood poverty is among the biggest indicators for adult criminal behavior.

I had read a report by Temitope Oriola from the Department of Sociology University of Alberta Canada which said that of all minorities blacks have a harder time assimilating into the Euro-centric white culture - unlike say Asians for example. Add that to the low test rates, misrepresentation by media, the summer set-back theory, white flight (exclusive white communities tend to be more affluent), brain-drain (more money is invested into education and resources for non-blacks), lack of awareness/funding for diseases and struggles affecting blacks, etc.


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You've demonized the war-effort when in actuality America (as well as many other superpowers of the past) have used war to get where they are. The government is sometimes placed into positions where war is the only feasible choice and also war can't be started without the general approval of the citizen public. By effect the citizens are the ones doing the killing by supporting the war effort. As to what war solves - well in the past it stopped the aggressive spread of communism, placed strong-holds on many tyrannical reigns, sparked a revolution of independence shaping Americans into who we are today.

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As you have said I don't believe children should be indoctrinated with what is right and wrong. However at a young impressionable age I can understand why as a parent you will see to it that the child is not exposed to ideals which stray from your set guidelines. When you lie you promote a good degree stability. Doctors are known to lie to their patients, real-estate agents lie to buyers, parents lie to their offspring so it happens. It's ironic but understandable that teaching is the profession that lies the most.

There is hypocrisy as you said. There is a religious saying that only man puts one sin before another, but all sins are equal in the eyes of God. Everyone must follow the rules, people who judge others must be prepared to face judgement themselves.


As you said good and evil really depends on which side you are on. For big businesses and corporate execs, you won't meet your victims and are missing out on a whole lot of guilt. Unlike a desperate man who does stick-up robberies to feed his family, a greedy corporate mogul could lie, cheat, and steal mercilessly from his victims and never come face-to-face with them.

An executive probably has more to feel guilty about but has slowly been working up the ladder of greed and won't get too close to anyone (work related that is). They might not even notice. No guilt = No crime = No wrong done.