Quote:

But, at least Europe and America have basically found a balance.

---

ElevatedMinds said:

This is from Terence Mckenna's work: http://deoxy.org/gaia/g_mind.htm

A guy named James Lovelock, a non-tripper came to a similar conclusion: http://www.unu.edu/unupress/lecture1.html

Joe Rogan came to the same conclusion through his own trips... His blog is called Conduit to the Gaian Mind...

Could Earth really just be one huge self-regulating organism, and we are the cells of it? If that's the case, look at large smog filled cities as cancer....

---

thatiAM said:

i doubt any species can become as prolific as humans are without having vast negative consequences on other species of the world.  IMO there's way too many of us to "live in harmony with the earth" blah blah blah. 

not just because of our sheer biomass, but because of how many minds that is.  you'd never be able to get everyone to agree on living in any specific way (one that is not so harmful to other species/the environment). 

people would try to destroy it and take over.
we need too much food and clean water.
even though eating meat requires 10-20x the land and resources (need to feed a pig/cow with vegetables, then eat the meat which only has something like 10% of the vegetable nutriment that the animal has eaten) that eating straight up vegetables would require, we still are gonna eat meat.
if everyone decided to stop growing meat for food, even just the vegetable agriculture plots we require have vast ecological consequences on local and worldwide weather patterns, resource cycling and species survivability/evolution.

basically, there's too many of us.  way too many.  for us to do no harm.

---

jewunit said:

Right but if large smog filled cities are cancer then cancer is an extremely young disease since smog filled cities haven't even existed for a century.
I'm willing to bet people have been dying of cancer for much longer than 100 years.

---

He is not referring to a cancer found in people.
He is talking about smog (and large cities) as being a cancer on the planet

UpSwell said:

Quote:

I kind of think a hunter-gather society with tribal music/gatherings, free love, and shamanic practices would be an incredible way to live. Everyone decked out in war paint, crazy out fits, and dreadlocks hunting deer with primitive weapons? I think that would be kind of cool. I don't find cubicles and machines to be very fulfilling. Just me. The Native American way of life is something I do honestly long to return to. Besides, all that really matters in life is human connection and happiness.

Not to mention, I play lacrosse in college. Lacrosse was a Native American sport, I feel I would be in business if society collapsed and we went back to nature haha.

---

The hunter/gatherer existence is a harsh life with high infant mortality and a short life span.  You can look at the age of 30 when your teeth start falling out and you are considered an old man.  Waging war on your neighbors is a must because if you don't they will.  Native Americans relied on slavery and ownership of women to make their tribes work.  People routinely died as a result of minor illnesses, and parasites were rampant (worms).  Simply breaking your leg is almost certainly a death sentence, as hunter/gatherer societies do not produce enough surplus food to care for sick/lame members.  Old people were abandonded in the wilderness and left to die.  Seasonal availability of food meant that malnutrion and vitamin deficiencies were common.  People starved en masse during cold summers or when game animals didn't migrate nearby.

After two weeks of transporting you back in time to live with the Apache, you'd be crying for your momma wanting to come home.  If you told the indians you could go to the supermarket for food and use a metal knife to cut meat, they'd make you take them with you.

---

ElevatedMinds said:

But that was back when they had smaller minds. Throw in Terence Mckenna's take on evolution and give us 5,000 more years of gaining brain power, then put us back into the hunter gatherer/farmer existence and see how we would do. Modern brains with archaic lifestyles? Bartering systems in communities of farmers? We would still have the same technology, just in a more friendly/eco-friendly environment.

---

Quote:

Sorry, you can't have 'technology' without a huge industrial/commercial complex to produce it.  So what you're talking about is modern society.

You also just insulted all the hunter/gatherer and subsistence farming tribes and people throughout the earth, implying that they are 5,000 years behind in brain development.

---

Quote:

National Geographic special on new types of energy... They can literally harvest the energy produced by thousands of growing plants.

---

Quote:

How do we have the technology for the fucking Iphone, but not for a car that runs on cannabis oil or something?

---

Quote:

Rudolf Diesel originally designed the diesel engine to use coal dust as a fuel. He also experimented with various oils, including some vegetable oils,[1] such as peanut oil, which was used to power the engines which he exhibited at the 1900 Paris Exposition and the 1911 World's Fair in Paris.[2]

---

JackofSpades said:

I don't think humanity is a cancer. I think we're just blinded by our own egos and choose to act in cancerous ways.

We are capable of good. People just need to realize it.

---

M.Reynolds said:

JackofSpades said:

I don't think humanity is a cancer. I think we're just blinded by our own egos and choose to act in cancerous ways.

We are capable of good. People just need to realize it.

---

your body doesn't just start producing cancer cells, regular cells go cancerous and uncontrollably reproduce in tumors and spread.  I think that sums up humanity pretty well

---

UpSwell said:

Meat is a very efficient source of food for humans.

---

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19526134.500-meat-is-murder-on-the-environment.html