The War's Over

[mnaz]

that's a pretty amazing article, jack. (disturbing on the deepest levels too.) but really now, "simulation shutdown" (?) runaway "nano-bots" (?) that all seems straight out of "soon-I-shall rule(and/or destroy)-the-world-mwahahahahah!" evil genius villain schemes from '60s TV. that all seems pretty far out there ...

or is it?

reminds me of an old book I found in the miner's cabin at the gold mine i was watching--- written in '77 at the height of the nuke arms race--- i forget the title, but the subtitle was, "how science can avoid its biggest blunder-- annihilation of its pursuers." science is like another sub-religion in its own right--- also used and manipulated by the forces of global capitalism... which not only seems like some sort of emerging "uber-religion," but it also seems like a sort of new shape-shifting "mega-mafia," muscling out the old mafia factions (kinda like the vegas strip. but I digress ....)

ah, what a wonderful world.

smell the flowers .....

[jackofnightmares]

smell the flowers
ten four
what else can we do except that
and listen to the music
https://www.youtube.com/user/DixieFriedUK
and read Henry Miller

[mnaz]

the author's name was barry commoner, a scientist, ecologist and professor. he ran for president in 1980 on the citizen's party ticket (the good candidates never have a chance).

from wiki:

One of Commoner's lasting legacies is his four laws of ecology, as written in The Closing Circle in 1971.[15] The four laws are:[16]

1.Everything Is Connected to Everything Else. There is one ecosphere for all living organisms and what affects one, affects all.
2.Everything Must Go Somewhere. There is no "waste" in nature and there is no "away" to which things can be thrown.
3.Nature Knows Best. Humankind has fashioned technology to improve upon nature, but such change in a natural system is, says Commoner, "likely to be detrimental to that system"
4.There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. Exploitation of nature will inevitably involve the conversion of resources from useful to useless forms.

a pretty perceptive thinker, i'd say ....

I was wrong on the publishing year--- it was 1967.

I think of all that nuke waste building up in our waste dumps. all those nuke plants built so close to earthquake faults. that mountain of garbage growing out in the ocean. all those disappearing forests and species. all those ...

now i'm just starting to depress myself ....

earth first!! (we'll trash the other planets later....)

[jackofnightmares]

I remember that election, I voted for a guy named Anderson from Illinois.

I another perceptive thinker I thought, Norbert Wiener
"When we arm ourselves, we arm our enemies" The Human Use of Human Beings, read that book back in the seventies. I tried reading it again a few years ago but I am not as smart as I used to be. All about command and control,
how is this for a meander>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Command and Control also a book about our nuclear weapons and close calls
http://www.theguardian.com/books/video/ ... ning-video

meanderthal me

[mnaz]

I consider it a bit of a miracle that the nuke arms race didn't liquidate us. (yet.) when you consider the computer tech (still in its infancy) that became involved, and the human error potential at every twist and turn.

musta had some sorta cosmic guardian angel watching over the rock ....

seriously though. we have to do much, much better than that. (understatement alert....)

[gypsyjoker]

"If all goes according to play"

The Maginot Line will hold them this time. Lloyd George and Kaiser will mourn the Archduke but finally decide that the secrete treaties were bullshit and the son of a bitch had it coming.

We won't need fight over the J.P Morgan war bonds, everything will be peachy, none so rational as a military man.

Nuclear weapons been a priority of Obama but that don't get much ink.

Yes the Ukraine is a sticky wicket but we sure don't have to worry about diplomatic miscalculations anymore.

I guess I have become callous about conventional wars or maybe
I have a sick sense of humor

I shei-t I am one post behind you again
beback soon as I read it

[gypsyjoker]

(understatement alert....)

just remember to keep me alerted
like Diana Moon Glampers I take you at your word

I must have a morbid streak why are my favorite authors all suicides?
Except for old Kurt, but lord knows he tried.

Sci Fi radio drama about a third nuclear holocaust, from memory "what is this crazy clockwork mechanism in us that makes us do it again and again, as if the first time we saw a billion dead was not enough"
Walter M. Miller Jr.

[mnaz]

"what is this crazy clockwork mechanism in us that makes us do it again and again, as if the first time we saw a billion dead was not enough"

that is the question ....

funny ... you can look at human evolution (and nature) in different ways. to me, war and militarism has always seemed apart from what is (at least arguably) an "intrinsic (genetic?) human capacity for violence." the latter may be a required for the former, but the former is more arranged and self-justifying. some thinkers go so far as to say militarism is a long dead-end for the species--- essentially a 10,000+ year "wrong turn." not sure if I buy that, but it's an interesting idea.

it does seem to go against the idea of adapting and evolving (how many thousands of years do we go on hitting ourselves with the big hammer of our own (somewhat orchestrated) collective making? ... is it a genetic thing? does a wide-eyed toddler instinctively have a militaristic urge? .....

all of these things we've talked about here are somewhat interrelated. religious belief comes into play too--- if man's true nature is sinful to point past any hope of "self-redemption," then I think that would influence how we think of our evolutionary possibilities...

anyway, it's an interesting, terrifying, glorious world we were born into ....

[stilltrucking]

I think we have had this conversation about( the ten thousand year ago wrong turn) a couple years ago. I think I quoted Douglas Adams.

"What if" questions are fun in chess. And back if Virginia we used to play what if Lee had done this or Jackson had been there. Or if Hitler had been accepted into art school.


I can hardly get my head around epigenetics but I was always amazed at how fast cultural evolution occurs, what if culture feeds back on our genome, and there is a new generation coming of indigo children.
this is probably off topic, I hardly understand epigenetics but it seems so interesting.

Epigenetics, Semiotics, and the Mysteries of the Organism
http://www.ibiblio.org/hhalpin/homepage ... Sinha1.pdf

[stilltrucking]

Cut and Paste

Are They Here to Save the World?

To skeptics the concept of indigo children belongs in the realm of wishful thinking and New Age credulity. "All of us would prefer not to have our kids labeled with a psychiatric disorder, but in this case it's a sham diagnosis," said Russell Barkley, a research professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. "There's no science behind it. There are no studies."

Dr. Barkley likened the definition of indigo children to an academic exercise called "Barnum statements," after P. T. Barnum, in which a person is given a list of generic psychological characteristics and becomes convinced that they apply especially to him or her. The traits attributed to indigo children, he said, are so general that they "could describe most of the people most of the time," which means that they don't describe anything.

Parents who attribute their children's inattention or disruptive behavior to vibrational energy, he said, risk delaying proper diagnosis and treatment that might help them.

To indigos and their parents, however, such skepticism is the usual resistance to any new and revolutionary idea. America has always had a soft spot for the supernatural. A November 2005 poll by Harris Interactive found that one American in five believes he or she has been reincarnated; 40 percent believe in ghosts; 68 percent believe in angels. It is not surprising then that indigo literature, which incorporates some of these beliefs along with common anxieties about child psychology, has found a receptive audience.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/12/fashi ... d=all&_r=0

[Artguy]

http://www.google.ca/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=& ... 5741632215