Resource-Based Economy

Narg wrote:

You might like to think that greed isn't a fundamental part of every one of us, but social studies show quite the opposite.

I'm willing to bet pretty much every one of these experiments was conducted using people who were raised in places that promote westernised cultural values.
Basically all that does is prove my point, that living in the society that we do promotes greed, mental health problems such as stress, depression, etc, as well as crime, an lot's more.
If you took a group of Buddhist monks, or say certain indigenous tribes who values are based around working together as a whole community, respecting their elders instead of putting them in nursing homes because they don't have the time to look after them, or simply don't won't to, you'd probably get quite different results.
Actually, scratch that, there's no probably about it.
The problem lies in marrying the technological advances of the modern world with the values of certain older cultures.
But, I think If people were to understand the benefits of this, they might think twice about a change.

Have you ever seen EEG/MRI scans of people who have been meditating for 30+ years before, Narg?
Specifically the areas in the brain which control contentedness, bliss, empathy, stress, anxiety, etc.
You might maybe wanna look into that, it's quite interesting to say the least.

I think one of mans greatest problems isn't greed, but short sightedness.
Because we only have relatively short lives this can create the illusion that everything has and always will be the same, so why bother trying to change things?
Some people however have a different outlook, be it scientists, inventors, philosophers, whatever...
Some of the greatest visionaries the human race has ever spawned were either largely ignored during their lifetime, ridiculed by those unwilling to accept change, or labelled lunatics, heretics, and christ knows what else.
Only after all the opposition died out, or could no longer ignore the overwhelming evidence to the contrary did they begin to think "maybe he was onto something here?".

Now I'm not saying this dude is, or others like him with similar ideas, that would be fucking arrogant to say the least, just that we should keep this in mind before we outright dismiss it based on what we think we know now.

Blame Westernised culture all you like, but it's the people that formed that culture. The culture can influence later generations, but it's more of a collaborative influence than an over-bearing one. We live in a society of our own (or at least earlier generation's) choosing, and the reason thing suck is because ultimately. as a total populace across the globe, we suck at looking out for one another. I don't think that will change unless there's a situation which forces us all, or least the vast majority of us, to confront that truth and realise the value of the 'live together, die alone' view of survival.

Spectral Knight wrote:

Blame Westernised culture all you like, but it's the people that formed that culture.

"The people", or just a few people?
Isn't it usually the case that were lead by a few that have a great deal of wealth and power behind them, and in turn use that power as a way of grabbing everyone else by the balls?

I like this quote.

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

Reinhardt has a nice picture of the Houses of Parliament on his site today.

I think it's Monet (another pun)

http://www.enterprisecorruption.com/

Spatchcock wrote:

Spectral Knight wrote:

Blame Westernised culture all you like, but it's the people that formed that culture.

"The people", or just a few people?
Isn't it usually the case that were lead by a few that have a great deal of wealth and power behind them, and in turn use that power as a way of grabbing everyone else by the balls?

I like this quote.

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

It's an Albert Einstein quote ...

http://thinkexist.com/quotation/we_can-t_solve_problems_by_using_the_same_kind_of/15633.html

Spatchcock wrote:

Spectral Knight wrote:

Blame Westernised culture all you like, but it's the people that formed that culture.

"The people", or just a few people?
Isn't it usually the case that were lead by a few that have a great deal of wealth and power behind them, and in turn use that power as a way of grabbing everyone else by the balls?

Which doesn't make sense considering there's now more opportunity for class progression than there was several centuries ago. If what you're saying is true, we'd be more stuck in a rut than less.

I think rarely has anyone "chosen" society from one stage to the next. Mostly it changes very gradually, due to lots of little changes (usually improvements) here and there.

However, I also don't think it's a coincidence that the societies with the best quality of life in the world - best medicine, technology and science - are mostly the somewhat capitalist democracies. History has shown that incentive vastly increases progress, and that money is a good incentive. Who knows what will happen if we switch to a "resource-based" economy, whatever that might mean? I don't see how people can be so confident that it will "enhance lives" and have such a positive environmental impact. Wild speculation almost as bad as Marx, imo. Could - at a very long stretch - work out. But no way of knowing or testing, and as far as we know it could reduce everything back to primitive ways of life. Maybe that is what you're actually getting at... I'm more interested in the overall development of the species than the stress-load of individuals though.