GDP != quality of life or standard of living
375 karma · joined February 7, 2016
How should one measure self worth?
>Verify any approach to life by generalisation: what would happen if everyone followed it? The Buddhist approach leads to stagnation.
Who said everyone should follow any given approach? If everyone followed any particular approach to life it would lead to stagnation, extinction.
On the contrary, Buddhism emphasizes change, as opposed to stagnation.
If and when attempting to formulate coherent arguments, avoid using such absolute statements.
Not being able to afford education, or clean clothes, or a permanent residence rules you out of 99% of the job market, which is why so many give up on the job search. As stated by OP (and many parts of society), this is morally wrong, akin to being sub-human, untermensch. Actually believing this sentiment contributes further to this negative feedback cycle and leads to depression which leads to drug abuse.
"Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water."
And another which reads:
"Miraculous power, marvelous activity. Drawing water, chopping wood."
Study history, and we find that declaring war on those things increases the collateral damage and massively strengthens criminal syndicates.
What about a combination of the two[1]? I.e. recording digital lessons and then using a community question and answer forum to fill in the gaps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.#NSA_mon...
http://www.statista.com/statistics/272314/advertising-spendi...
>I grew up in a small town. If something was going on out from behind closed doors, everyone knew about it.
This is a phenomenon Marshall McLuhan wrote about back in the 60's when electric media was gaining traction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_village_(term)
>In the electric age, when our central nervous system is technologically extended to involve us in the whole of mankind and to incorporate the whole of mankind in us, we necessarily participate, in depth, in the consequences of our every action. It is no longer possible to adopt the aloof and dissociated role of the literate Westerner.
Once I stopped watching television, I was no longer exposed to such incessant advertising.
As a result, I stopped caring so much about impractical consumption. I.e. buying the new car they show every 10 minutes in such persuasive and skillfully crafted multi-million dollar targeted advertisements.
Two of the three main goals of the money system, as stated in the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, are to maintain stable prices and maximize employment.
So, not only does technological ephemeralization run counter to these explicit goals, it also cedes power from the super administrators who dictate the money supply which ultimately determines monetary prices across the globe.
Precisely my point.
>it can be changed very easily.
It would seem this is not the case, though I wish it was.
Property: a thing or things belonging to someone.
Do our minds not belong to us?
This is a problem which Marshall McLuhan wrote about frequently, he described our situation as if we were navigating the present like someone driving down the road using only the rear view mirror.
>Hypnotized by their rear-view mirrors, philosophers and scientists alike tried to focus the figure of man in the old ground of nineteenth-century industrial mechanism and congestion. They failed to bridge from the old figure to the new. It is man who has become both figure and ground via the electrotechnical extension of his awareness. With the extension of his nervous system as a total information environment, man bridges art and nature.
>ambient light entering private space as a side effect of projecting a message elsewhere
Advertisements are not designed to be projected anywhere else besides your psyche.
>focused light entering the same space with the intent of creating the message within the space.
Again, visual advertisements are focused light created with the intent of inserting a message into your eyes and psyche.
>"I'm going to give you an important kind of a picture. I hear a lot of people say "I don't like machinery and technology it's making a lot of trouble", so we're going to take all the machinery away from all the countries of the world, all machinery, all the tracks and the wires, and the works and were going to dump it all in the ocean. And you'll discover that within 6 months, 2 billion people will die of starvation, having gone through great pain. So we say, "that's not a very good idea, let's put all the machinery back where it was".
Then, we're going to take all the politicians from all the countries around the world and we're going to send them on a trip around the sun, and you'll find we keep right on eating. And the political barriers now...scientists say very clear you could make the world work and take care of 100% of the people at a higher standard of living than anyone has ever known despite the increasing population, but you can't do it with the political barriers, any more than you can try run a human organism with a wall between the ear, the eye, and the stomach. It is an organic whole, it is total industrialization."
This is true in terms of physical reality, but not in terms of the patent system.