DividedQuantum said:

Thanks for all the interesting responses guys.  As I said above, this was only a hypothetical scenario.  Clearly, as you all have spelled out, there are many functional limitations to unlocking the food.  I was just wondering what the situation would be if people no longer had to work for the privilege to remain alive.  In an ideal world, access to food would be a basic human right.  Of course, basic human rights are not very well enforced in this world, obviously.  I'm under no illusion that the term 'basic human right' means much of anything in most places on this planet.  Anyway, good responses.

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laughingdog said:

Quote:

LunarEclipse said: from the SRM program and massive holes in the ozone layer as a result.

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SRM program??

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DividedQuantum said:

Of course you're right, but I still have to wonder whether, given the choice, if people no longer had to work, or work as hard, to provide for themselves, what would happen?  I don't believe in utopia, once again -- this is only a thought experiment.  But the interesting part to me is that locking the food up seems to be the linchpin making civilization remain essentially what it is.  People must either work, be provided for by someone else, or be homeless.  Unlocking the food would shake all that up.  But I do take your points, for sure.

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DividedQuantum said:

The human species was never meant by Nature to engage in conducting civilization. We're simply not equipped by our evolution to be able to make it work. Perhaps that is why we are so bad at it.

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Quote:

"We have to change ourselves. And we'll never do that. Because of the dollars now. Cause everybody wants a dollar and a toy. Everybody's got a telephone that will make pancakes and rub your balls. So nobody wants to rock the boat. Nobody wants to change anything.

We are on a nice downward glide. I call it circling the drain. And the circles get smaller and smaller and faster and faster. And you watch the sink empty. Huish!

I then we'll be gone. And that's fine. I welcome it. I wish I could live 1000 years to watch it happen. From a distance - so I can see it all.

- Does that depress you? -

No, it lifts me up! It lifts me up, because I gave up on this stuff. I gave up on my species and my fellow countrymen. Because I think we squandered a great gifts. I think humans were given great great gifts: walking upright, binocular vision, opposable thumb, large brain... making tools, language, learning... Great gifts! And we gave it all up for both money and God. [...]

We gave it all up to superstition, primitive superstition, primitive shit. An invisible man in the sky, looking down, keeping track of what we do, make sure we don't do the wrong thing, if we do, he puts us in hell, where we burn forever.... That kind of shit is very limiting for the brain we have. So we keep ourselves limited.

And then we want a toy and a gizmo and gold and shiny things, and we want something to plug that will make big things for us... And all this shit is nothing! It's nothing.

And Americans, who also had great gifts... When you take the theory of democratic rule - self government. OK, they started off wrong: they owned slaves, they didn't let women vote, they didn't let people who didn't own land vote, fine, they started on the wrong foot. But the ideas were good. And we fuckin' blew that! We polluted it with this stuff, things, material goods, gains, gizmos, toys gadgets, having possessions...

"Ah, he's got a bigger truck! Did you see his truck? It's bigger than mine! I'm getting a new truck! Oh, and he has a DVD on it? Oh, I gotta have a DVD too!"

Please... whatever happened?.... And that's why I'm divorced from it now. I see it from a distance. I got myself a divorce. I said: "George, you have no stake at this, you don't care one way or another. So watch it, have fun."

You know what, I said it this way: when you're born in this world, you are given a ticket to the freak show. And when you're born in America, you're given a front row seat. And some of us get to sit there with notebooks. And I'm a notebook kind of guy: (writing) "Oh, my God, did you see that?" And I watch the freak show, and I kept my notes, and I make up stuff about it, and I talk about the freaks. And the freaks are all humans, and they are all like me, and we are all the same. I'm not better, I'm not different, I'm just a part now. But I don't have a stake at the outcome. I'm not a cheerleader for a given outcome now.

Oh, they say if you scratch a cynic, you'll find a disappointed idealist. And I would admit, that somewhere underneath all this there's a little flicker of a flame of idealism that would love to see it all - huish - change. But it can't happen that way. And incremental change - it just seems the pile of shit is too deep."

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nuentoter said:

I absolutely agree.

Although there is a part of me that looks at us and thinks we actually are awesome at colonization if you look at the globe, but that's only if you don't look too close. We may be good at colonization and adaptable living but we suck at efficiency ands maintenance.

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laughingdog said:

Some Monks and nuns maybe the sanest among these arrogant horny primates. But regardless it looks like the show is almost over.

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laughingdog said:

DividedQuantum said:

The greatest scam in the history of the world is the practice of putting the food under lock-and-key.  And when you think about it, this one factor is what's keeping entire civilizations in their regular orbit.  Just imagine what would happen if people no longer had to work to eat (or get medicated).  If the storehouses of food were ever to be unlocked, very interesting things would happen.

I often wondered as a young boy why we had to pay for food.  It seemed to me that everyone ought to live for free.  Thirty years later I still don't have an answer.

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Sounds angry or frustrated.

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laughingdog said:

this brings up how do we measure “fully doomed “
all dead? or just all suffering constantly?
if we use suffering,
much of humanity is already in bad shape:
most of the ‘3rd world’ perhaps?
next everyone in a war zone,
next all the really obese Americans,
refuge camps in Africa
many in countries with gross human rights abuses
etc.

or we could use delusion as part of our yardstick:
I would include all soldiers as being seriously deluded
even the rich stock  brokers

why go on?

if the yard stick isn’t: ‘all dead’. I would guess it’s already well underway for the mass of humanity and the planet (especially once the GMOs and cloning experiments get loose, (we already have antibiotic resistent bacteria & pesticide resistant insects)). It’s not just global warming, chernybl, 3mile island, & fukashima & the plastic ‘island’ in the pacific, it’s a world wide half century of chemical dumping, with fracking now adding to water pollution and causing earthquakes in Oklahoma, what else? ozone hole, decaying infrastructure, more nuclear power plants in earthquake zones (New York State), or near rising sea levels, left over live land mines maiming people, … stop me somebody!

I think “AI singularity “ is pure Sci-fi. I agree with George, the planet will be fine. The roaches were here before us and will be here after us. No problem. unless as you say the nukes go off or another cosmic collision like the one that got the dinosaurs happens. We were never promised a rose garden after all.

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