Should we return to nature?

[Markomarkh]

Hi all, everyday I wake up I sometimes think humanity is on the wrong path, there are three things I think are the worst inventions that have been devastating to humans and our earth and that is religion,money and digital technology or Internet. People seem to have more problems than ever these days like disease, mental illness, debt, wars, violence, cancer, loniness, depression, suicide and many more that we've really seen in the last 2000 years, we advanced to fast in the last 1000years we cant cope withit. Before 2000 years ago for 40 millions years since humanity began we lived closer to nature and lived more like the animals, like animals we didn't need money or Internet or modern tech to live. Just think the earth was fresh with forests, nice untouched land, fresh water, rivers and beaches, fresh food, berries and fruit. We lived with very little problems like today because we were closer to nature. I think modern society and modern tech will collapse and we will return to community and nature. I listened to a few anti tech anti transhumanism shows and come to the conclusion that we are on the wrong path. What is this train of thought? Anarcho primitive? It seems technology is advancing fast yet us as humans and community hasn't? What you think?

 

[Xorkoth]

I think we're on the wrong path too, due to greed superceding all else. I have a story relating to this topic, it happened in the winter of 2010. I was living then where I do now, a house on a mountainside. I was having a lot of thoughts just like what you describe around that time and for a while before, that I wished society would collapse and we could go back to living off the land, and stop destroying the environment and descending in societal madness due to misplaced priorities. Then, it snowed 16 inches overnight, and I lost power for 4 days and nights, during a period where the highs were 25 degrees F and the lows were around 10 degrees. My car was stuck at the top of my (long and steep) driveway, and I had no way of leaving my house as all the roads are steep and they were covered in snow, and I live outside of city limits so there was no snowplow coming. The main road is around 5 miles until I reach the nearest grocery store (which is the nearest non-residential thing). All of my friends and loved ones live 10+ miles away. I had little food in the house so my ex-wife and I were very hungry by the end since we ate it all before the power came back. It got down to 34 degrees in the house by the end, the pipes all froze too, so there was no water the last 2 days (well, we melted snow in our mouths). We had to spend the last day and a half huddled together in a down comforter to avoid hypothermia. It got dark before 5pm and didn't get light until 8:30am, and we ran out of candles after the second day, so spent much of the time in total darkness. I had begun looking around for ways to get food (although I wouldn't have been able to cook anything) and I quickly realized that there was no way I'd be able to eat in the winter here if we lived off the land. I mean, sure, if I was part of an indigenous culture, we'd have that figured out, but we are not, we don't really know how to live off the land. It would be so hard to survive. If I had gotten dangerously hungry or thirsty or cold I COULD have trudged 5 miles through the snow to a heated grocery store, but if society did not exist, that wouldn't be possible because there would be no grocery store, or emergency service to call for rescue.

After 4 days the power came back on and I have never been so happy to see a lightbulb working in my life, I almost cried. I will never forget that experience. It taught me that there is a reason for where we are now. The path to civilization began in order to better survive. Back in the day, the human lifespan was like 35 years max... you were old by the time you were 30. I'm 34 now, I'd be ancient if I was still alive at all. Life was hard, really hard, in different ways. Many of our children would die. People would die all the time. We would inevitably seek to better survive. Civilization is inevitable.

However we could have done it differently. We could have decided when we first saw how much damage was being done with fossil fuels and how unsustainable they are, to focus on solar and wind power. Solar power has the capacity to produce clean energy for the whole planet, maybe not now but what if we had spent the last 50 years developing it? I think our society is sick because we've been detached from what's really important for so long. But it's not how it has to be... and it's certainly possible that we could have developed our culture differently.

 

[spacejunk]

Great post Xorkoth.
I think we missed a great opportunity to reassess humanity's relationship with fossil fuels during the oil shock of the early 1970s.
If developed nations had made major investments in renewable ebergies then, we'd have a nuch brighter future now.
Sadly, climate change is turning Mother Nature into a seriously destructive force that is increasingly threatening humanity/life on earth.
It's disturbing to see how much the climate has changed in my lifetime alone. It's also been sad to watch species die out.
There are a type of black cockatoos that were everywhere in my hometown when i was growing up. Great flocks of them would land in a tree in my parents' yard when i was a kid, and eat all the flowers off it. Enormous, majestic birds, and you'd see flocks of hundreds of them.
Sadly they are now critically endangered due to habitat destruction and development housing in the coastal woodlands they once used for food and nesting.
The flocks you see there now are ususally less than a dozen birds, and they often look kinda weak and hungry. It really breaks my heart.

 

[Xorkoth]

But to add a little, yes, we SHOULD return to nature. And by that I mean, I think a lot of the emotional issues people have these days is due to a near-total disconnect from nature. We are in fact a part of nature. We evolved over millions of years as a part of nature just like every living being. I feel so bad for people living deep within cities whose only source of "nature" is something like central park. For me, spending time with trees, plants and animals is deeply centering, I can't imagine life without it. In fact I moved out of Chicagoland to a house in the mountains, in the forest, 5 minutes from hiking trails away from civilization. Whenever someone says to me "why would you ever leave <insert city here>, it's got everything", I cringe. We weren't meant to live so disconnected from what's real.

 

[Ziiirp]

The problem is, that the world wide oil lobby is so strong, that there will be major military conflicts before humanity finally raises up and abandones to abuse the blood of our planet (the oil) and gets energy by solar power plants. There is enough uninhabited space in Egypt to supply the whole African continent with energy.

So the problem is obviously political but soon (enough?) the oil lobbyist will become extinct and there is no need even for military conflicts in the middle east for getting the fingers on possible oil pathways to Europe (so called "developed" states).

Unfortunately voting for "green" parties does not solve anything at the moment, because they are also heavily involved in lobbyism and keeping the share values of certain interest groups up. THIS is the major problem, that prevents us from evolving to a peaceful planet. If nothing changes in the next 10 years, we go the Stephen Hawking way : Ruin the planet and let a small "elite" search their luck on the next habitable one, just in order to also ruin it in the end.

 

[Ziiirp]

But to add a little, yes, we SHOULD return to nature. And by that I mean, I think a lot of the emotional issues people have these days is due to a near-total disconnect from nature. We are in fact a part of nature. We evolved over millions of years as a part of nature just like every living being. I feel so bad for people living deep within cities whose only source of "nature" is something like central park. For me, spending time with trees, plants and animals is deeply centering, I can't imagine life without it. In fact I moved out of Chicagoland to a house in the mountains, in the forest, 5 minutes from hiking trails away from civilization. Whenever someone says to me "why would you ever leave <insert city here>, it's got everything", I cringe. We weren't meant to live so disconnected from what's real.

The whole truth. Awesome statement. Major western cities are full of delusional people (mainly tourists, working expats and newbs from little towns, that search for a thrill in an overhyped mega-agglomeration).

 

[Yourbaker]

I've meant to respond to this thread for a while but I'm in the mountains doing what I love so it's not been a priority.

I do see us as not on the best path we could take. Most of us can see that but we remain mired as a group with no clear leadership to get onto a better path.

Technology is a tool we have used to get here and it can provide wonderful effects and horrible effects. Most bad results are all attributable to greed and the subsequent misuse of technology. I see a much better path with technology but we need to reconnect with each other, our world and most importantly, ourselves. We hear it all the time but we don't apply it to ourselves we just see how others might benefit from it, I need to take time for me before I can give you anything useful.

Society can move to a better path, we haven't missed our chance but it is slipping away. We need to wake up and realize our children's best chance at survival is to kill us off quickly before we ruin the globe, or we can change paths. I see a simple solution, just stop long enough to consider what we actually need and what we really don't. We've built thousands of systems that are becoming obsolete we need to rediscover the simple effective ones like community and cooperation again.

 

[Foreigner]

I just spent 6 days off the grid and I find the OP question very timely...

The world's most populous and industrial nations have destroyed much of their green space, including Europe and the United States. What remains is usually not the original old growth, but a very curated space so that we are preserving what we think of as a "natural legacy". The fact is that if technological economy collapsed tomorrow or the green revolution stopped being able to meet demand (as it is beginning to), a lot of humans will die.

A long time ago I talked to a native elder who told me that in her people's oral history, they talked about the sky being blackened by the number of birds flying in it. The flocks were huge, the fish were plentiful. Even what we think of as plentiful today is nothing compared to what it was originally. There were so many animals that it would be physically impossible for every predator (even humans) to make a dent in their numbers.

And this idea that we can cut down old growth and eventually baby trees will grow up to replace it, is also a lie. The nurse trees are hundreds of years old and have faced every possible challenge imaginable, until one day some asshole with a chainsaw comes along and cuts it down. The synusiae of the forest is then destroyed and never really recovers. Those huge trees are holding something incredibly complex together that we are only beginning to understand, after undoing decades of mindless succession theory that has no real basis in the reality of how organic systems operate.

We can't return to nature in the way that humans used to live in nature. There are too many humans, and nature is no longer in the same state. It has been pillaged, not for necessity, but for profit. The damage is done. So it's not just about the number of humans but also the mindset that is driving our lifestyles. Most humans still view themselves as separate from nature in the sense that they have dominion over it. There is still very little concept on a global scale about what it means to harvest in sustainable ways. It will take millions of years to recover and only if human numbers are significantly scaled back. The earth's annual bounty can support about 500 million humans globally, in relative comfort, without causing devastating burdens, extinctions, and pollution that's in excess of what the earth can break down.

I was watching a beaver build a dam this past week... and I noticed how its dam was supporting the pooling of water into an area that supported a complex eco-system. It turned a running water way into a bog whose micro-biome in turn detoxifies the forest sulphur content. Frogs and tadpoles start populating, then birds eat the frogs, then larger predators come for the birds. The trees get nourished by all the decaying matter and nitrogen fixation. And then I remember how in Canada, the fossil record shows there used to be something like 30 million beavers in Canada... and the Europeans hunted them to near extinction for their pelts. So that the pelts could be sent back to the wealthy in Europe, to wear at their dinner parties. Humans are so lost.

There is no real utility in having more humans on this planet, apart from economics, which only a few humans are benefiting from. In other words the number of humans currently on the planet is largely a farming operation for the elite to accumulate as much capital as humanly possible. If the world collapsed tomorrow they would be safe in their bunkers and safe houses, at least temporarily, while the huge cull of the herd commenced. If you look at traditional native societies, their tribes tended to be small. Even the bigger centers like the Mayans, the Inca, the African tribes... they had conclaves of several hundred to several thousand humans. When they formed coalitions they grew into the millions, but they were also engaging in wild permaculture in ways which are now lost to us because we eradicated their societies. They used to build gardens right in nature so that nothing was disrupted. We don't even know how to do that anymore. People are re-learning but that level of integration is just gone.

I've been studying a lot about resistant micro-organisms lately. The last new viable antibiotic was created in 2012 and there are no new ones being made. It will more than likely be resistant organisms that take care of this human mess because modern medicine's approaches are losing effectiveness every year. The Spanish flu of the early 20th century infected 1 in 3 people globally and killed 1 in 5. It was mostly spread by soldiers returning from war, but the variant was a result of human-animal cross infection. We are likely to see something of similar proportions within the next 30 years or so, especially with how industrial agriculture is creating such prime conditions.

Maybe after a bunch of humans get killed off we can re-evaluate this system... but really, it's going to take widespread recognition of the small group of humans who are contriving this whole thing, and dismantling them. Maybe even killing them if necessary. These dynasties of old power are centuries old and they are cleverly embedded. Everything they do is with purpose.

 

[-=SS=-]

I think Xorkoth's power outage story captures why we shouldn't be to eager to abandon what we have. You don't know the value of something, really know the value of it, until it's gone.

Sure, society has its issues, but the idea that we need to return to nature.. we are nature. We are not doing this, none of us are. What's unfolding on this planet is as natural as anything else, we shouldn't be so eager to throw it all away, and we don't even know if this is all part of some wider design or engineering way beyond our understanding. Personally I see society as a launching pad for civilization - many men will die in the construction of the vessel of civilization, and the environment too will take a hit, but perhaps this is merely the energy requirement necessary to furnish the vehicle and get it into orbit so to speak.

There's this grass is greener refrain I often see posted, indeed I have uttered it in my youth too, that if only I and a small band of similar people could just find ourselves away from the clutches of modern living degeneracy then we could do it right, get it right and live a balanced life. Of course there's always the caveat that this noble tribe shall live 99% naturally but still get to enjoy the 1% benefits that society has developed, such as steel tools for example. Naturally this fact is always overlooked and never really contemplated seriously - unless you go 100% you haven't left at all, you are still reliant on society and are no different from the millionaire celebs who live in 100% eco houses and think they're saving the planet. Anyway, so your tribe decides that actually it does need steel tools but doesn't want to interact with society to obtain it. OK. So where is the knowledge coming from, the manpower, the time and facilities for you to mine, refine, smelt and cast the steel, just so you can have basic tools? You need to expand your numbers to get to that point, which begins the inevitable progression towards society again.. because as the numbers grow so to do wider social forces within the group that require mitigation and sublimation. Religion will sooner or later come back into the picture. And so on.

I quite like using the example of Eric Cartman in Southpark when he buys a theme park for £1,000,000, just for himself because he's a selfish asshole. He very quickly runs into the issue of realizing he needs a security guard to keep everyone out. Costs money. OK, need to let in 2 people to cover the security mans salary. OK, rides break down, need maintenance guy, need to let in 2 more to fund that. And so on, until the theme park has got right back to where it was originally. It's a twisted and divergent contemporary example, but I hope you can see the parallels in it. Once the ball is rolling you can't stop it and it's pointless to fight it. Cartman inevitably fails because his ideal was not compatible with the wider natural/social forces at play.

Some say we need to go backwards to mud hut living again. Some say we need to leap forwards to transhumanism, or planet colonization. Look what happened when electricity burst on the world at the beginning of the 20th century. It alleviated a lot of suffering and drudgery, but it also accelerated the degenerative influences in our society - our 24hr world couldn't exist by gas or candle lighting. Overall my point is that it doesn't matter if we go back to mud hut living or forwards into transhumanism; until we sit down, shut up, and figure out what the hell we are, who we are, then we are doomed to cycles of endless suffering. I wish I could put it more eloquently but I firmly believe we will be doomed to repeat the same mistakes regardless of technological level - we have to understand the forces at play in ourselves and the group first.

Ironically I think some attempt has been made in this regard down through the ages by visionaries and intuitive individuals, and their insight has been coded into the major religious texts as personal guidance on moral conduct in order to mitigate and sublimate some of these individual and wider social forces we can't put our finger on. To that end I think we've made a real mistake in our modern wisdom by becoming too materially focused through science, and believing we can simply decide through democratic voting what constitutes these invisible social forces; you only need to look to what feminism has done to marriage and the damage in relations between the sexes to see we're in real trouble as a society now.

 

[Jabberwocky]

great posts. I too agree that our days of return to nature are over. Doesn't mean we shouldn't commune with nature or spend a portion of our lives getting to know nature and in contact with it. One of the most powerful practices I know is hugging a tree. Trees are some of the most selfless and connected creatures on the planet. They understand love and teach it freely. The return to nature can be simply found by communing with trees. I went to UC Santa Cruz where living in a tree for a month or so was a right of passage for students on the campus at the time. I never did this myself but I got the message. Practice tree hugging regularly. Confide your heart to trees. Get love from them. Give them a little love too. It really did wonders for my state of mind after a while.

 

[Xorkoth]

A long time ago I talked to a native elder who told me that in her people's oral history, they talked about the sky being blackened by the number of birds flying in it. The flocks were huge, the fish were plentiful. Even what we think of as plentiful today is nothing compared to what it was originally. There were so many animals that it would be physically impossible for every predator (even humans) to make a dent in their numbers.

And this idea that we can cut down old growth and eventually baby trees will grow up to replace it, is also a lie. The nurse trees are hundreds of years old and have faced every possible challenge imaginable, until one day some asshole with a chainsaw comes along and cuts it down. The synusiae of the forest is then destroyed and never really recovers. Those huge trees are holding something incredibly complex together that we are only beginning to understand, after undoing decades of mindless succession theory that has no real basis in the reality of how organic systems operate.

Yeah, where I live, in the NC mountains, we have a vibrant and diverse ecosystem, but the old growth forests were entirely logged in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Apparently the forests were totally different before then, there was a towering canopy of massive trees. I really wish I could have seen that. I love the forests here now but except in a few isolated places, it's all comparatively very young and small trees with lots of undergrowth. The rhododendrons have taken over in a lot of places, and I love them, but the entire landscape is very different from how it once was, and it will probably never return to how it was before.

great posts. I too agree that our days of return to nature are over. Doesn't mean we shouldn't commune with nature or spend a portion of our lives getting to know nature and in contact with it. One of the most powerful practices I know is hugging a tree. Trees are some of the most selfless and connected creatures on the planet. They understand love and teach it freely. The return to nature can be simply found by communing with trees. I went to UC Santa Cruz where living in a tree for a month or so was a right of passage for students on the campus at the time. I never did this myself but I got the message. Practice tree hugging regularly. Confide your heart to trees. Get love from them. Give them a little love too. It really did wonders for my state of mind after a while.

I love trees and I find being among them to be a very peaceful and centering, and even humbling, experience. That's why I moved into a forest. I disagree that "our days of returning to nature are over" though. For one, we ARE a part of nature, we can't be separate from it. But I get what you mean of course, as I mentioned in a previous post I think a lot of people feel like we are not a part of nature and choose to live away from the rest of nature. But we also have the ability to choose where we live.

I think Xorkoth's power outage story captures why we shouldn't be to eager to abandon what we have. You don't know the value of something, really know the value of it, until it's gone.

Sure, society has its issues, but the idea that we need to return to nature.. we are nature. We are not doing this, none of us are. What's unfolding on this planet is as natural as anything else, we shouldn't be so eager to throw it all away, and we don't even know if this is all part of some wider design or engineering way beyond our understanding. Personally I see society as a launching pad for civilization - many men will die in the construction of the vessel of civilization, and the environment too will take a hit, but perhaps this is merely the energy requirement necessary to furnish the vehicle and get it into orbit so to speak.

There's this grass is greener refrain I often see posted, indeed I have uttered it in my youth too, that if only I and a small band of similar people could just find ourselves away from the clutches of modern living degeneracy then we could do it right, get it right and live a balanced life. Of course there's always the caveat that this noble tribe shall live 99% naturally but still get to enjoy the 1% benefits that society has developed, such as steel tools for example. Naturally this fact is always overlooked and never really contemplated seriously - unless you go 100% you haven't left at all, you are still reliant on society and are no different from the millionaire celebs who live in 100% eco houses and think they're saving the planet. Anyway, so your tribe decides that actually it does need steel tools but doesn't want to interact with society to obtain it. OK. So where is the knowledge coming from, the manpower, the time and facilities for you to mine, refine, smelt and cast the steel, just so you can have basic tools? You need to expand your numbers to get to that point, which begins the inevitable progression towards society again.. because as the numbers grow so to do wider social forces within the group that require mitigation and sublimation. Religion will sooner or later come back into the picture. And so on.

I quite like using the example of Eric Cartman in Southpark when he buys a theme park for £1,000,000, just for himself because he's a selfish asshole. He very quickly runs into the issue of realizing he needs a security guard to keep everyone out. Costs money. OK, need to let in 2 people to cover the security mans salary. OK, rides break down, need maintenance guy, need to let in 2 more to fund that. And so on, until the theme park has got right back to where it was originally. It's a twisted and divergent contemporary example, but I hope you can see the parallels in it. Once the ball is rolling you can't stop it and it's pointless to fight it. Cartman inevitably fails because his ideal was not compatible with the wider natural/social forces at play.

Some say we need to go backwards to mud hut living again. Some say we need to leap forwards to transhumanism, or planet colonization. Look what happened when electricity burst on the world at the beginning of the 20th century. It alleviated a lot of suffering and drudgery, but it also accelerated the degenerative influences in our society - our 24hr world couldn't exist by gas or candle lighting. Overall my point is that it doesn't matter if we go back to mud hut living or forwards into transhumanism; until we sit down, shut up, and figure out what the hell we are, who we are, then we are doomed to cycles of endless suffering. I wish I could put it more eloquently but I firmly believe we will be doomed to repeat the same mistakes regardless of technological level - we have to understand the forces at play in ourselves and the group first.

Ironically I think some attempt has been made in this regard down through the ages by visionaries and intuitive individuals, and their insight has been coded into the major religious texts as personal guidance on moral conduct in order to mitigate and sublimate some of these individual and wider social forces we can't put our finger on. To that end I think we've made a real mistake in our modern wisdom by becoming too materially focused through science, and believing we can simply decide through democratic voting what constitutes these invisible social forces; you only need to look to what feminism has done to marriage and the damage in relations between the sexes to see we're in real trouble as a society now.

I agree with more or less all of what you're saying. I do think though that it's quite clear we are accelerating the changes happening in the climate quite powerfully, as it is simply a fact that we're releasing tremendous amounts of carbon, which is a greenhouse gas, which is in turn releasing even more carbon through a runaway melting process. The slow progression out of the last ice age is happening regardless, the Earth has gone through many, many cycles of ice age to virtually no polar ice, but normally this happens not in several human lifespans, but thousands and thousands of years. I'm not sure if you were trying to say we are not affecting that with our actions or not.

 

[Ovidio]

We should most definitely spend time in nature. If you do not spend time in nature, you are missing out.

 

[vortech]

I see an increasing synergy in symbiosis between nature and civilization/technology/cities etc. It is possible to transmit earth frequencies over the wire, essentially; inspiration from nature becomes art in many ways...I'm excited by emerging music styles. As things like 432hz tuning gain prominence, and electronic music continues to hybridize with acoustic/organic/'humanized' elements, new consciousness will emerge that is both ecologically reverent and technologically enhanced, fluidly. I don't see it like an all or nothing thing- sure some people will build a tree house in the woods, get naked and dance around the fire, and some people will hole themselves up in skyscraper cubicles, but I think many will find their appropriate balance somewhere in between.

 

[Ovidio]

I'm more about getting out of the city to where there are forests and animals. Or up in the mountains with the peaks and snowflakes. Or out on the ocean with some waves and fishies.

 

[sekio]

It'd be foolish to throw out all technology and go the way of the cavemen, that said plenty of studies show that a sterile concrete environment is not healthy for the mind. Green spaces in cities and stuff like potted plants in offices have been shown to improve spirits in general.

I live in a city that is pretty dense with parks and tree cover and I have to say I don't know how people in e.g. the industrialized areas of China put up with it... walking or biking outside and smelling all the various greenery is so mentally cleansing, almost.

 

[-=SS=-]

It'd be foolish to throw out all technology and go the way of the cavemen, that said plenty of studies show that a sterile concrete environment is not healthy for the mind. Green spaces in cities and stuff like potted plants in offices have been shown to improve spirits in general.

Attention Restoration Theory. Quite fond of that research, used it in my masters dissertation.
http://www.ecehh.org/research-projects/attention-restoration-theory-a-systematic-review/

I live in a city that is pretty dense with parks and tree cover and I have to say I don't know how people in e.g. the industrialized areas of China put up with it..

If you grow up in that kind of space then you don't know what you're missing and neurologically you're already damaged goods. Having grown up in a very green pleasant area, having visited the countryside a lot in my childhood, every time I visit a major urban centre something in me recoils, I get stressed out, and by the end of the day I'm just done. Spent 3 years living in central London in my early twenties and it really affected my mental health.

There needs to be more green than grey. More birdsong and leaf rustling than car tyre friction and police sirens. More blue sky than tops of high rise buildings. If the balance is more urban than rural I start to lose my shit.

 

[Xorkoth]

I also can't handle it. I get really anxious in, for example, downtown Chicago or New York. I get depressed in suburban Chicagoland, less of the anxiety (that's largely from the intense press of people), but it's just like, blah. I moved to the mountains, on the outskirts of a popular small city of 83,000ish people, my house is in the forest a few minutes from a national forest, in a little cove where I mostly just hear the birds and wind and insects and so forth, the occasional car from a neighbor or leaf blower. Bears come through my yard, we're cool, they know me. Whenever I want I can drive a short way and spend the day at some beautiful waterfalls or hiking or whatever. I also sometimes go downtown and it's fun to be around a lot of people and do that thing (plus I tend to like the people I meet who live here), but I only experience that when I want to. I can't tell you how much of a huge difference it's made in my quality of life and inner calm. I go back to the suburbs to visit my family a couple of times a year and I start feeling really weird after a few days, some old familiar disturbances start to come back. I always feel like I'm holding my breath until I return home a little bit, and I always feel right again when I do. I would never move there again even though my family all lives there and that sucks. I actually knew that urban/suburban living was making me feel bad which is basically why I moved here, but I had no idea how much of a difference it would make. My dad has ALS and it's getting pretty advanced. I told him I would move home, when he was starting to really be affected a lot by it, to be there for him, and he told me, please don't do that, you're obviously so much happier where you are, you have your life to live, the last thing I want is for you to not feel like you're in your right place because of me.

I'm lucky I have great parents. But even though I do have great parents and I was raised well, I found myself with an increasing tendency towards anxiety and depression, and just not quite feeling like I was fitting into the thing I was living in, until I moved and got reconnected to the world in a broader sense that the human-built world.

 

[Foreigner]

I too need nature. My health improves tremendously when I have time away from the city, such that I am considering moving somewhere more rural. I feel that a lot of our human level problems could be resolved if people reconnected with nature. I find most city people degenerate... not in a denigrating way, but I mean the kinds of dysfunctional behaviors I am seeing. We are still just animals at the end of the day and I don't think animals are meant to live this way, especially in such close quarters. Humans are social but we are also rather territorial and can't tolerate a certain number of other people being in proximity to us. Most of the people who claim they thrive in cities are usually of an economic bracket that affords them the ability to take time away when they want to.

At the same time I am struggling even with the idea of rural spaces. Even the most off the grid places seem to be inhabited by people now and the same shitty economic system is everywhere. I feel like there is no real escape and that the only solution is to have money, and that tailspins back into the original problem. My desiring nature is under control and I need very simple things to be content at this point, but it seems like even simple contentment requires going through capitalism and I am just so tired of it.

The planet could benefit from much fewer humans at this point. The technology can stay and continue evolving but there's no reason for this many human beings to exist. Every human being wants their piece of the pie, wants contentment, wants "all the things", wants a family, wants wants wants. People need to stop breeding. Everyone thinks their child is special but your child does not remove one less burden from this planet. Most people are mundane and thinking your child is going to grow up and solve world hunger is a pipe dream.

Btw I lived in China in a more traditional city. It had 5x the pollution of L.A. on any given day. I remember reading in the newspaper there one day that 80,000 people died in Shanghai in a single year from pulmonary failure, most likely due to smog and cigarette smoking. Most of the wealthy are abandoning China in droves. It is becoming a total wasteland. I don't see how this economic system can end equitably. There's barely any original green space left for people to return to. Imagine people fleeing the urban areas in droves, into the countrysides? It would be mayhem. In the city I lived in, the human level dysfunction was intense. Most people knew they had no real future. It was a very aggressive culture... people always yelling at each other, screaming even. I saw more than one person totally go insane on the street and be carted away.

 

[Xorkoth]

The planet could benefit from much fewer humans at this point. The technology can stay and continue evolving but there's no reason for this many human beings to exist. Every human being wants their piece of the pie, wants contentment, wants "all the things", wants a family, wants wants wants. People need to stop breeding. Everyone thinks their child is special but your child does not remove one less burden from this planet. Most people are mundane and thinking your child is going to grow up and solve world hunger is a pipe dream.

Too true. People need to stop reproducing, well, obviously not completely or after current generations die we'd be extinct. So then the problem comes in where somehow some people are determined to be able to reproduce and the rest aren't. I can't see how to do that in a way that people get down with. Add to that the biological drive to reproduce (most people seem to want to... I'm not sure at all that I want to, my girlfriend and I decided we're never going to try to do it although if it happened we might go with it - but even so, part of me really wants to), and I can't see how that will happen. And add to THAT people who don't have access to contraception or refuse to use it... it's a quandry.

But for sure, population reduction on a massive scale is what's needed for this to work out long-term. I just don't see any good ways to accomplish it. We can't round people up and kill them. People have tried that, and it's absolutely morally abhorrent. So, what do we do?

Btw I lived in China in a more traditional city. It had 5x the pollution of L.A. on any given day. I remember reading in the newspaper there one day that 80,000 people died in Shanghai in a single year from pulmonary failure, most likely due to smog and cigarette smoking. Most of the wealthy are abandoning China in droves. It is becoming a total wasteland. I don't see how this economic system can end equitably. There's barely any original green space left for people to return to. Imagine people fleeing the urban areas in droves, into the countrysides? It would be mayhem. In the city I lived in, the human level dysfunction was intense. Most people knew they had no real future. It was a very aggressive culture... people always yelling at each other, screaming even. I saw more than one person totally go insane on the street and be carted away.

Wow, that sounds intense... makes me thankful for what we have, despite our myriad problems.

 

[-=SS=-]

But for sure, population reduction on a massive scale is what's needed for this to work out long-term. I just don't see any good ways to accomplish it. We can't round people up and kill them. People have tried that, and it's absolutely morally abhorrent. So, what do we do?

I'm not convinced that interfering with the sexual dynamic is a solid idea - we've had astounding success with the introduction of feminism into Western society, which was of course fully researched and examined prior to its introduction /sarcasm. If we start meddling with the dynamic even more it's only going to generate more problems. Population growth in developed nations isn't the focus of the issue, it's the emerging economies that pose the real additional pressure. They are essentially trying to leapfrog the societal development the west underwent, without undergoing the social development - you can't just inject multinationals and western technology into primitive societies without a birthrate explosion and the inevitable insatiable demand for material things that this brings when devoid of any moral restraints. Naturally no corporation gives a hoot.

Families are the bedrock of a civilized society and the way forward towards civilization. Technology is an accessory and won't be able to ameliorate moral degeneracy in the long run, which is really where all our issues stem from. Fiddling with population growth is a recipe for disaster, economically and socially.