Prophetic wisdom from a century ago preceding even the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.
'Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes.'
'Every Socialist outbreak only blazes new paths for Capitalism'
'Through money, democracy becomes its own destroyer, after money has destroyed intellect'
'There is no proletarian, not even a Communist movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, and for the time being permitted by money - and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact'
'Talk of world peace is heard today only among the white peoples, and not among the much more numerous coloured races. This is a perilous state of affairs. When individual thinkers and idealists talk of peace, as they have done since time immemorial, the effect is negligible. But when whole peoples become pacifistic it is a symptom of senility. Strong and unspent races are not pacifistic. To adopt such a position is to abandon the future, for the pacifist ideal is a terminal condition that is contrary to the basic facts of existence. As long as man continues to evolve, there will be wars'
Oswald Spengler... the last quote about the West abandoning the future really hammers home the truth.
So true. Although with the size and function of the state in the West I'd say the real economic difference between us and China is the difference between Internationalist and Nationalist Fascism.
Not only are the Chinese people Nationalist in a way that we are not, but the Chinese elite direct jobs, money and production towards their own people and the Western elite direct jobs, money and production away from their own people.
At least we know what the wage monkeys and cubicle farmers of tomorrow will be doing for a living: Pollinating by hand. There was a fear that increasing mechanisation and technology would make 95% of the Human race redundant, well not anymore and it's all thanks to destroying the earth.
There's a little more to it than that. Consider how women online are going to overrate their looks due to the attentions they receive. Online is not like on the street or in a bar where women witness soliciting men also checking out every other woman in the place... women online are daft enough to believe that they are special.
Combine this with photoshop, myspace angles and trickery lighting on photographs and what you have is an army of plain jane e-imposters thinking they're 8/9's when they'd never be more than a 6 even on her wedding day.
So, in addition to men(correctly)being the ones to take the initiative, you also have online women massively overvaluing themselves. These twain pressures mean that the typical guy may never get that first message.
Most scientists who discuss free will say the story has an unhappy ending—that neuroscience shows free will to be an illusion. I call these scientists “willusionists.” (Willusionists include Sam Harris, Jerry Coyne, Jonathan Bargh, Daniel Wegner, John Dylan Haynes, and as suggested briefly in some of their work, Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins.) Willusionists say that neuroscience demonstrates that we are not the authors of our own stories but more like puppets whose actions are determined by brain events beyond our control. In his new book Free Will, Sam Harris says, “This understanding reveals you to be a biochemical puppet.” Jerry Coyne asserts in a USAToday column: “The ineluctable scientific conclusion is that although we feel that we’re characters in the play of our lives, rewriting our parts as we go along, in reality we’re puppets performing scripted parts written by the laws of physics.”
And that's the concern. Once we become aware that we don't have free will then the idea of holding people accountable to their actions will be weakened, and so the discovery of fate will mean entering into a much darker chapter of the story.
We don't really make any choices sayeth the brain scans. It seems to be an illusion - we've already made up our minds before we're even consciously aware of it - because we were always going to choose whatever it is we chose.
And this would fit what we are finding in quantum mechanics. When we watch sub atoms they behave differently to when we're not watching them(when we're not watching they exist in a superposition of infinite possibilities), we configure sub atoms just by observation, we change their reality just by watching. A rational explanation for this would be that we live in a set reality(fate)and so by our own observation we draw the sub atoms into our own fate.
This may seem counter-intuitive, but no more so than fact that the Earth is round or that we revolve around the sun.
It seeming more and more likely that everything we do is destined to happen in the exact way that it does. Genetics, neuroscience and physics are all adding up to the conclusion that all is predetermined, that there is no free will.
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts... And this is what existence seems to be, players acting out parts in the grandest of all plays.
The NHS in England spends $155 billion to cover 49 million people.
The American government spends $1.1 trillion to cover 83 million people.
I can't be bothered to do the maths, but it's costing the American government around quadruple the cost to cover each individual. In what way is Obama's care act affordable? Any takers?
No geothermal or dams, but we're connecting ourselves with Iceland - via subsea cable - which has geothermal power.
And yes they do subsidise solar, but all they are subsiding is people feeling smug about themselves. It's actually both more expensive and costly to the enviroment to manufacture, install and maintain solar panels than it would be to just draw power from the grid. Taxpayers money financing Liberal middle class posturing(sound familiar? It should), this is what subsidising solar power is.
I'm intrigued at how all the high cultures of their age seem to have travelled westerly out from the middle east. From the Levant into Ancient Greece and Rome then centuries later into western Europe and Britain before crossing the ocean to the United States - which itself blossomed with its own expansion westward - and traversing another ocean into Japan and now China. At all times westerly.
I'll give you that nuclear waste is a real flaw, but it's not the most expensive even allowing for this. Fusion would be better and the Russians have the real know-how there.
Tidal power is hopeful, really hopeful actually, but I'm a power engineer and I'd bet my reputation that wind farms will come to nothing. Not only are they inferioir in quantity, but also in quality of the power provided. And treehuggers should take into account the emmissions of a two million pound concrete base for every turbine.
And I'm with you on subsidies, the state needs to subsidise infant industries because the disincentives are too front-loaded for capitalist appeal. Capitalists like to follow the market but they do so no further than their own nose.
Obstinance_Works Forum Posts (3,514)
RE: The Capitalits Comunist China
Prophetic wisdom from a century ago preceding even the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.'Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes.'
'Every Socialist outbreak only blazes new paths for Capitalism'
'Through money, democracy becomes its own destroyer, after money has destroyed intellect'
'There is no proletarian, not even a Communist movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, and for the time being permitted by money - and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact'
'Talk of world peace is heard today only among the white peoples, and not among the much more numerous coloured races. This is a perilous state of affairs. When individual thinkers and idealists talk of peace, as they have done since time immemorial, the effect is negligible. But when whole peoples become pacifistic it is a symptom of senility. Strong and unspent races are not pacifistic. To adopt such a position is to abandon the future, for the pacifist ideal is a terminal condition that is contrary to the basic facts of existence. As long as man continues to evolve, there will be wars'
Oswald Spengler... the last quote about the West abandoning the future really hammers home the truth.