UKC

So much evil going on in the world, so many vile people, wars, murders, rape. The list goes on.

Ultimately are there any events like the Syrian business, daesh atrocities etc that are NOT caused by religion?

What is the future for humanity? I despair.

Stop the world, I want to get off.

In reply to FesteringSore:

Is this about that Alex honnald video?

In reply to FesteringSore:

I don't know.

In reply to FesteringSore:

I don't think religion is the cause as such. Religions for the most part preach peace, whatever some adherents choose to believe. I think if it wasn't religion it would only be some secular, tribal, political, cultural disagreement.

In reply to FesteringSore:


Pretty much business as usual then. (In human history)

In reply to FesteringSore:

we are all casualties of game theory. including the climate.

In reply to FesteringSore:

And do you know what the future holds? Do you? Do you really?

Brussels sprouts, that's what. And not shoved down Nigel Farage's neck until his bodily chemistry becomes as malodorous as his personality but served to you, on a plate, to eat.

Sobbing wouldn't be inappropriate.

T.

In reply to FesteringSore:


I think those events - while troublesome, are at lower levels than ever before. If I'm not mistaken, statistically this is the case. We have the lowest levels of war ever. It just seems like it's more, because we're reporting it more, perhaps more than ever before.

However, in my opinion - the far bigger issue is what we're doing to the planet. It's totally and utterly unprecedented in human history, and the scale of the problem - the timescales, the severity, the thermal momentum we've created - it's utterly terrifying. The complete and utter lack of empathy for the children of the future, the world we're going to let them inherit - is astounding. Do I have to say it again - the level of extinction now is 1000x the background rate. The sixth mass extinction event, and we've barely started fecking things up. Yet most people do nothing - they refuse to even consider their diet of animal products is causing a problem (98% of all animals in the entire world, are farm animals, for reference), refuse to spare any moments of their time to pressure changes, to stop using 'disposable' plastic ("Almost all plastic that has ever been produced, still exists", or least of all - to even think about it.
What this should feel like, is the feeling you get when you watch a sci-fi movie, and the ship is leaking atmosphere - depressurizing, and the crew are slowly dying. No air... Can't breathe... Can't think... No air...... Can't breathe... Dying....... Dying.... Dying......
Except on our ship called Earth, only a few people are panicking. Of course the Earth will survive - just as the leaking spaceship will keep floating on forever and ever. But the humans of the spaceship, they won't - they'll be gone.

In reply to FesteringSore:

youtube.com/watch?v=zQvirEcN29A&

In reply to FesteringSore:
It's probably ultimately the human capacity for 'othering' other human beings, which gives people with enough darkness in them permission to do bad things to others?

We're not all rapists and murderers - but we probably all 'other' where we shouldn't do. I certainly do...

In reply to FesteringSore:

The world won't stop, at least not until it's swallowed up by the expanding red giant sun. What we perceive as environmental disaster is just natural regulation mechanisms kicking in to rid the world of a species which has overpopulated. Nature being messy though, a lot more species are going with us. Religion is neither here nor there. It's just a collection of psychological devices which have evolved along with our big brains.

We've had good run though.

In reply to FesteringSore:


That'll be 4 quid please, for a single ticket

In reply to Andy Long:


While that might be true - it is I believe, avoidable. Totally avoidable, even with people being who they are, the logical fallacies that govern thought, the current system being what it is.
Your view is bit fatalist, and I believe that those intelligent enough to come to such a view need to abandon it, and think more along the lines of a moon shot to save the future of lifekind. Ethics need to be taken seriously again for this to happen - I believe they were the baby thrown out with the bathwater of religion. We've somehow as a society come to the conclusion that your job and every day life are divorced from your virtues. That whatever you do for a living, as a hobby, at home, as a habit - doesn't affect your virtue.

In reply to FesteringSore:

youtube.com/watch?v=9EH1G4EwljM&

In reply to Andy Long:



Not really - a million years plus or minus isn't that great for a species.

In reply to FesteringSore:

The only answer is education. In Tanzania I've visited two massive soap factories, each of which has a huge boiler house, outside which are truckloads of cut up trees waiting to be burned. It can only be the ignorance of the country's citizens that allows the owners of the factories to get away with squandering the earth's resources in such a brazen way.

In reply to FesteringSore:

just a little bit of positivity: did you see Panorama with John Simpson?

he was reflecting on his career covering conflict; but noted that the rate of deaths from armed conflict is much lower than it was 50 years ago when he started- either 1/4, or less than 1/20, i heard a trailer for the programme and different numbers were quoted in that, though he may have been referring to a different measure- either way, progress

also re governance- dictatorships down from 80 to 20; democracies up from 40 to over 100

deaths from terrorism also much lower than the 70s and earlier, despite what we hear on the news

some things are getting better; though the points about environmental degradation are a real concern- hopefully trump's climate change denialism will be another thing he quietly drops now he's won...

In reply to abseil:

What, to be jettisoned into space? That's pretty good value I think.

In reply to FesteringSore:

This may cheer you up: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/0141034645

There's actually never been a better time in history to be alive, so keep your chin up.

In reply to GrahamD:


Actually, I believe we've only been around for some 150-250,000 years as a species. A vanishingly short period of time, but we've done rather well in that period in lots of ways. Chin up.

In reply to Siward:
One problem solved. 4 pounds to dispose of a body weight of CO2.

In reply to FesteringSore:


Well, unless we destroy ourselves and send our technological development back to square one (possible but unlikely) it's likely that in due course we'll give birth to, and be immediately superseded by AI which will render much of our labours useless. This in turn will cause MASSIVE global political upheavals, which may lead us to destroying ourselves anyway.


Go climbing instead. Or get into volunteering for something worthy. Might cheer you up and provide a brighter outlook on humanity's capacity for good

In reply to GrahamD:


More likely around average. Most species of, say, birds, who are particularly well studied, are from more recent radiations, even though we can of course trace deeper divisions at the genus or higher level. It is hard to say how long extant species will stick around (actually not really, we are busy killing off most of them....), and for fossils species level assignations are notoriously tricky.

In general it appears that species are turned over continuously (once described as the "field of bullets" model: There is nothing but good or bad luck that makes one species long lived while another dies out quickly), with a few interspersed mass extinction events, usually resulting from cataclysmic changes in the environment that rendered all the wonderful adaptations species accumulated during their evolution suddenly useless or counterproductive. We are living through a home made one at the moment: As mentioned above, the rate of species loss is several orders of magnitude higher than long term averages.

If you want a good but boring run, you should try being a priapulid or brachiopod: With all caveats concerning paleospecies (especially for soft bodied forms), there appear to be some species that are unchanged since long before the dinosaurs even appeared!


CB

In reply to FesteringSore:

I thought most wars are about resources not religion.

Religion is just used as a way to alienate foreigners, incite hatred, so that people will fight those wars. Most people won't want to risk there lives for something as banal as stealing someone else's oil.