Society vs Nature

[Taomeow]

Conspiracies!!! I like conspiracy theories, whether they're true or not, it's nice to see people brave enough to question the official story. That Forbidden Archeology book looks like it's drawn a lot of skeptics saying it's biased because of the author's Hindu beliefs and use of outdated information, but who knows, it could be closer to the truth.

Anyone who learned history (even "official" history as taught in Europe, don't know what they teach here but have a feeling that, um, hardly anything) -- as I was saying, anyone who learned history realizes that "civilized" history has always been made via nothing but conspiracies (and actions decided upon by the conspirators with enough power to act on their conspiracies). The opposite view of conspiracies as something unreal, something that "never happened," and especially "isn't happening now," is the outcome of successful (and always ongoing) brainwashing that causes the brainwashed masses to have this knee-jerk response to anything that is not the official version -- bah humbug, conspiracy theories! -- and to feel gratifyingly superior to anyone in disagreement with the syndicated media's prolefeed (Orwell's term for planned disinformation of the masses). Once you spit out the prolefeed, conspiracies become, alas, our current reality to the same extent they have always been, rather than some paranoid fantasy or the outcome of the "theorist's" ignorance and gullibility. "Not believing in conspiracies" is only possible if one hasn't been paying attention to history as it actually happened.

[arnquist]

don't know what they teach here but have a feeling that, um, hardly anything

Sad but true, if I relied on school to teach me everything I would be a total zombie! I've been watching tons of documentaries lately and getting a much fuller picture of the world.

 

Sicko

Fahrenheit 9/11

Bowling For Columbine

Michael Moore Hates America

The Enemies of Reason

Root of All Evil?

Bible vs Book of Mormon

Lifting the Veil of Polygamy

Why We Fight

War Made Easy

Loose Change

Zeitgeist

Guns Germs and Steel

The Great Global Warming Swindle

Doomsday Called Off

Walmart, High Cost of Low Prices

 

Penn and Teller: Bullshit is good stuff too. There are a couple I'm looking forward to as well, Prince of Peace/God of War and Religulous. Gotta take everything with a grain of salt though, biased agendas and honest mistakes can always creep in.

[seadog]

The reproductive patterns of women in todays affluent western nations differ greatly from those of our ancestors.decrease in age menarche,in the number of pregnancies, in duration of breast feeding and increase in age at first birth all lead to an increase in the overall number of ovulations and menstruations a women has within a reproductive lifespan.This accounts for the rise in many female disorders we see in modern society.Endometriosis,osteoporisis,osteoarthritis,ceverical cancer,etc.

P.s.Anyone who believes we live longer now then in the past.isn't looking back far enough.Also it may be well and fine that people in western nations live till eighty or older.The question should be what sort of life do they have?Drop into a nursing home or hospital and have a look, then consider if our current agenda of poly pharmacy is truly successful.

[Taoist81]

One should definitely not "ignore" the "anomalies" but one should also refrain from basing their entire view of human history upon them. When one reads the various research journals and those "nasty", "untrustable" studies done by people who actually know how to test fossils and bones, it is interesting to note that all these diverse people from different places find that humans never lived to be hundreds of years old. We never had "magical" golden ages where our technology and societies were more advanced and less damaging to the planet than now (obviously it was "less damaging" because there were fewer humans, but not that our "way of life" itself was less destructive). All the myths of society talk about them, but (just like the Book of Mormon) there is no evidence for it. So they either flew away on space ships, taking every stitch of evidence with them or, as occam's razor would suggest, they didn't exist (accepting that one cannot prove a negative, it is just remarkably unlikely).

The ancient societies were just as modern archeaological and palentological research suggests, primitive cultures not all that far beyond what we see in modern ape "societies". Regarding lifespans, based on the majority of evidence thus far uncovered (again assuming they didn't take it with them to their new alien homeworld) humans have for a very long time had (allowing for infant mortality and disease) a lifespan in the vacinity of 70 years. The "average" is closer to that now, because we have more people who are able to eat and have access to medicines so they don't commonly dies from the flu or other diseases that once meant near certain death. Do we have modern problems that ancient people never faced? Yes, obesity related problems for example. New diseases that we have likely helped to create. Sure. But, our ancient ancestors did not have an advantage over us in their likelihood of reaching the ripe old age of 50.

The problem with many books, just like the movie Loose Change and the various "studies" that Intelligent Design proponents espouse, is that they far to often focus on the art of debate (keep in mind that in logical debate on can rather easily construct a logical arguement based upon a completely false premise) with a small amount of "anomalous" evidence while ignoring the vast majority of the evidence. (that "anomalous" evidence, by the way, is not "discarded" by most scientists, most try to see where it fits, even if where it fits is based on chemical changes making an object appear older or younger than it actually is, e.g. the Shroud of Turin circa 1500 CE not 33) Science, no matter what the Discovery Instititute tries to tell you, is not some vast conspiracy to force "Darwinian Theology" on you. It is the pursuit of understanding.

Apologies to all who took offense to the first or this post. It is simply disheartening to....oh, nevermind. Logic and reason are too often taken as dirty words nowadays. Good day all.

[LDiR]

Personally, I see the Industrial Revolution as a very large culprit in the moving away from the natural.

 

Take the advent of jobs and so-called careers. Nobody before the IR was taught to go out, get some good education, and then get a job.

 

How many individuals prior to the IR worked for an hourly wage?

 

Most people were taught a ways and means to either go into business for themselves via a trade of some sort (smithing for example) or were taught how to be self-sustaining through a barter system, hunting/gathering, or agriculture. I guarantee that the pilgrims and Columbus didn't get in their boats, brave the fierce Atlantic ocean, to go to school and get a job.

 

Combine that with the modern trend of rising inflation and stagnating pay (my cost of living increases for the last four years combined doesn't equal the inflation for even one of those years).

 

The system that is in place retards personal autonomy because that's how big business works. Big business needs employees to work menial jobs, without them big business fails, but how do you keep an economy based on big business from collapsing? Educate the public that the only way to succeed in life is to get a job and attempt to climb a corporate ladder. Every corporate ladder has a top rung for every individual where the only way to advance is by the retirement or death of the person above you.

 

How this all fits in is that it is advantageous for an economy based on big business to keep people at the employee level, and it works much better if the employees delay pregnancy to use their youthful years for the advancement of the big businesses we are talking about.

 

I find it ironic and sad that if you go to school for business ownership in college you get taught by people who are government (or private, depending on the campus) employees. How are they going to teach you to own a business successfully if they've never done it? Those that you find who have done it are likely to have failed at it, how can you trust your attainment of knowledge in their hands. Theory only goes so far without the experience of practice.

 

I'm done for now, perhaps I'll come in and ruminate more later.

 

As a final, tangential note, I've always found it astounding in a very negative way that at the age of 18 a person can go out and make a pornographic video, but that you cannot buy one in most states in the US until you are 21 years of age. There's something wrong there.

 

-LDiR

Edited October 14, 2007 by LDiR

[seadog]

For the majority of time homo sapiens have lived on this planet we were hunter and gathers.Diseases such as flus and epedemics simply did not have a large enough matrix to survive in.It was only with advent of agriculture that people began to congregrate in large numbers for protracted period of time.Agriculture is directly responsible for a vast majority of ills we suffer in our society today.Pre european settlement Australian Aborogines for example did not suffer from diabetes,heart disease,alcholism etc.Replace aborginal with native american,inuit etc.This doesn't mean the lives were all cheese and bisquits,no doubt starvation, infection and warfare were killers but in terms of over all health and well being, there can be no comparison between a well balanced varied hunter gather diet and limited grain based agricultural diet.Truly would you rather spend your days hunched over in some grain field supporting a hieracrchy of priests and nobility or take matters into your own hands and share your luck with your tribe who in turn share their luck with you.