ripsawridge

The alternative is the real world, where you look into the eyes of the faces around you and put your energy into those relationships more than others. (Not being flippant. I was on FB 9 years, but realizing that I was prioritizing the far over the near was what got me to say goodbye).

Paying customer for years. I got 7000 photos up there -- memories of the best times of my life. Extremely worthwhile service. All these folks talking about "death knell" should maybe think about paying for it if the feelings are so strong. They must really value what is on offer, and how about showing appreciation for what is valuable in your life?

Wonderful insight!

True, but a) it's very much on the plan of every country without significant per-capita carbon emissions to become a country with significant per-capita carbon emissions, and b) the expanding populations can and often do emigrate to countries with significant per-capita carbon emissions where they add to the per-capita.

High emissions come from a monetary economy with a requirement of profit. Soon each remaining part of the world outside that economy will be a part of it, because this is how the monetary economy expands: putting regions "outside" under it's control. I just don't understand how people are sanguine that "now" it's "fine" because the rapidly expanding populations are outside of regions with intensive economic development, because very soon they will be inside such regions, either because a capital-intensive region enveloped them (no more free sheep grazing on the meadow, etc) or because the need for money in some area of their lives drove them into a capital-intensive region (favelas, etc.).

Yeah, I agree with that quote so much. I was a pretty avid user, and only very slowly realized that I'd begun carrying around "The Audience" in my head, which judged what I did and how I looked at all times.

Becoming disenchanted with that mode of consciousness was a very long journey, I'm humbled to say. A key moment for me was realizing that if I was in the city where some "friend" or another lived, I wouldn't try to contact them.

That's not a real friend. I'm not being a real friend. In fact, everything in the whole domain is mislabled, and who wins? The company and it's advertisers. Value is leeched from real-life existence.

Glad to be gone from it -- unknown, away, without apparent value!

I don't know why this is downvoted, even if someone disagrees with the opinions, there is a rich vein of ideas to explore. I think we are talking about objectification, in which everything becomes subject to a mental algebra necessarily devoid of empathy. The whole modality of sitting down at a computer and consuming information creates a bias to objectify what you see.

Anyway, on the original topic, as an American living in Germany, I really appreciate how relaxed people are here regarding nudity. I agree with a point other posters have made: the drumbeat of the fears and predilections of the dominant culture finally overwhelm the native one. Germans are pretty stubborn though, and carve out better lives in the diminishing yet still robust delta between their own ideas and imported ones.

I actually think this huge block of gun owners in America share a particular mindset with each other that means they'll become the local arm of the government in the hinterland.

Just as you always see affinity between police forces and right-wing activists, you'll see the government put on a face friendly to rural gun culture, and that group will be installed as enforcers.

So I don't buy this argument that the wide availability of guns in America in any way ensures a "Freedman's Paradise." It ensures more oppression, as the (expensive) arm of Federal power recedes.

"I don't know what more you want."

I think rabboRubble was just offering good practical advice: the "prostration" OP offers has at least a hint of insincerity about it, and isn't serving anyone. OP should follow the advice and concentrate on his positive contributions he can make.

Excessive prostration can become a way of saying this is why I failed, and look, you people in the cruel world didn't support me. It's manipulative.

I think taking full responsibility means accepting that you may never work again, and that society may withdraw it's support from you completely. You may even die due to lack of resources (banishment). If you can hold that space without any anger, then you can be readmitted, because the kernel of resentment that started the whole thing has been fully burned up.

Without this step, the life pattern that creates wells of resentment is still active in you, and will recur, possibly disguised but still "hinky" (I like that word :p).

+1. There are other ways of looking at what you are and what this world might be. You are defining yourself by what you appear to be here. You are much more.

What if the meaning of your life right now is to have lost the thread of meaning? You are traversing a knife-edged ridge. I wish you good will, and come safely through.

Uncontacted tribes in the Amazon are not really uncontacted. They are the way they are by preference.

"Science and technology lead to creation of resources..."

No, they lead to finding and digging up of resources.

"and more efficient use of resources"

Efficiency doesn't make anything better, it just increases the amount of the resources that we create--oops---use.

"and less religious societies and less wars"

Okay, it's clear you have a story in your mind that ultimately leads to jetpacks among the stars.

"and lower birth rates." This doesn't mean much. We went from 3.5 to 7.5 billion in 45 years. We had plenty of science and technology during that time, all doing their thing with the uranium and the fossil fuel and the steel.

You could also find the beautiful things that you can easily reach. You'll have a better life that way, less filled with longing for the scarce, the disappearing, the already gone.

I'm not disagreeing with you, just pointing out that all "movements" are theater in a way. They have a position to state, and they get it out there by saying the words and doing the things. If it looks a bit artificial, well, it is. But it's nonetheless well meant. I'm sure some of them eat cheeseburgers sometimes, and that doesn't detract from the message.

Very interesting. I've heard stories of the GMO spreading to another farmers field, causing some problems. But that field is mostly devoid of insects, so it's easy for the GMO to live there.

I still think that a fear of "irreversible system-wide effects with unknown downsides" will persist, despite the good sense of your argument.

Also, as a technologist, I know that we move from solving easier problems to more complex ones. Who is to say that GMO tech isn't just beginning in farmers' fields, and that flush with success in that space, all those engineers, technology and know-how will happily move on to the Next Big Problem. This might be in wild-plant space.

Thanks for writing your article, it was good, and I sympathize with your experience!

I think we are brought up to believe we can pursue whatever we want to pursue, and of course this is true, but there is a cost. If that pursuit falls out of alignment with the community of which you are a part, life can lose it's joy. This isn't fair, it just is. We need to feel in a relationship of give and take with our community.

My own thought here is that the research itself is a good thing, and the act of pursuit deepens your character and experience in a way that makes you more valuable to your community. But people don't like the stories they hear about "patented" crops, about DRM in farmers fields. It's not the research that's a problem, it's the use to which it's put (at least in the eye of the public). GMOs seem to become a lever corporations use to monetize activities that we aren't sure should be monetized.

[I recognize that my "story" above is likely tainted with outrageous misconceptions. I don't disagree! I'm just playing back the image in my head around GMOs, mostly built by passive listening to the conversation in our culture over some years. You can argue with that story, but it's exhausting.]

I think you are caught in the gears of the working out of this vast cultural argument.

It's not out of fashion because of a name. It's considered dangerous because of the rate, and there is logic to that.

The slow change in dogs or crops over many decades or generations is tolerable. But rapid change can kill, or at least it excites danger signals in the affected organisms (people).

A car that creeps towards you slowly is fine. One that moves too fast might kill you.

I think rate is the central question in this problem, but it always gets elided in discussion with the word "just," as if rate was a minor concern.

I definitely sympathize, but I've come to recognize that we can only expect so much of people in mass numbers. I agree with the poster further up that people have a reason to fear the application of expensive technology to the food they eat...they are awash in stories of problems that were identified much later. When the people act on those fears we say they are irrational.

Of course they are, they are human beings, not computers. When have we ever seen such delicate reasoning survive at a mass scale? We call it scientific illiteracy, as if all those people promised to behave in a scientifically literate fashion at some earlier point, and are now behaving defectively.

No such agreements were made.

This tendency to "spread" the Evil label (and the Good one) across categories and into related but distinctly different domains is a biological rather than digital approach to threat. As the elite of a culture that aspires to the digital, we get outraged.

It's not going to make any difference, y'all know that, right?

It's strange how much fun it can be to spend an evening with a well-built mechanical tool, long forgotten by the rest of the world. I've got a portable ("laptop," LOL) Swissa Piccola machine that I just love, and a bigger 1937 Olympia whose keys feel fantastic.