Oh Paracelsus, that is an old one.  As my mom would say, you show your age.  I’ll just bump and grind on over to the shopping center.  wink wink (I really hate those emoticons)  Ready, aim, fire…..  Catch you all later.

I own Brazil and enjoy it frequently, I must be crazy too!  Yes, you are a heartless @#($&*%!  But funny.  Thank you for the laughs.

Well, thank you Shenonymous. You remind me of the girl next door, but then again I live next door to a strip club.
Eh, just shoot me.

The issue of co-responsibility, Paracelsus, comes from a recognition that there are benefits that you derive from living in a society and a mutuality of obligation to others that flows with those benefits.  I am sure that at some point in your life, you have benefited from either a “public”-funded resources, such as a public education, and you certainly benefit from public works projects—roads, water, police, fire, etc.

Co-responsibility entails a recognition of the commons; that humans have mutual bonds and mutual obligations.  It is why we live in societies—be they the more primitive, like that of the 19th Century Lakota, or the more advanced (what Tao derides as “civilized.”).  It is the loss of recognition of that mutuality of obligation that has led to our current demise—where the rights of a tiny class of billionaires to get richer still has been advanced over the needs of the many.

Here, in America, this obsession with individuality and refusal to accept co-responsibility explains why the value of health insurance industry profits which account for 31% of U.S. health care costs (as compared to 1% to 2% administrative cost in single payer countries), most of which find their way into the coffers of billionaire CEOs receives a greater value than the very lives of our citizens, 20,000 of whom die each year only because they lack the funds to purchase health insurance.  How sick is that?

P:  It does.  I own Brazil and enjoy it frequently, I must be crazy too!  Yes, you are a heartless @#($&*%!  But funny.  Thank you for the laughs.

Going shopping to my favorite store MalWart.  Damn it’s the only game in the area. Talk about Brazil! Isn’t that a state of mind too?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7870751859 520351405&ei=8nkgSZG6OI6qrgKCzLHxBg&q=brazil+your+r eceipt

Maybe this will work.

@ Shenonymous
@ IHR

Maybe I’m a heartless bastard, but this scene always cracks me up.

http://video.google.comvideoplay?docid=-78707518595203 51405&hl=en

And as the number of tree lovers grow, people haters are growing more.
From the Urban dictionary, both definitions combined: A tree lover is:
A person who loves nature. Who would do a crazy thing just to save nature.  A “hippie”
“That person over there is a tree lover.”
“wha.”
“She tied herself to the tree, yo!”
Or him over there, he tied himself up to a tree in front of a bulldozer.
“you joken me”
“na”

Some think the Environmentalists and Greens and totalitarians can be communists.  And tyrannical corporations authoritarian fascist pigs.  Now I don’t think the GOP wants to prevent sex.  They seem to imbibe in unethical sex quite a lot!  So do Democrats and other third, and fourth party types.  It’s not restricted to political types.  Celibacy seems to be a Catholic construct, expressed in several immoral ways, not including homosexuality since that is not immoral to me, a hetero.  But pedophilia is included, and patronistic oppression of their female support group (the nuns) and other females, it’s all related.

Some think anarchy is the best way to live.  Even if the anarchist wants to smoke around children, nothing and no one should stop them.

And some think both ends of the candle are mad.

The desire to control other peoples’ behavior so you don’t lose money is nothing new.  Many corporations, especially law firms, severely restrict the personal behavior of many of their key principle executives.

We knew one guy, a senior partner at his law firm, who was forbidden by his contract from riding a motorcycle, bungee-jumping, parachuting, even skiing!  He wasn’t allowed to do ANYTHING in his personal time that was “risky”, even if perfectly legal.

Where corporations lead, we can expect government to follow, whether it’s the GOP trying to prevent abortions and sex, or Dems trying to prevent smoking etc.

Now listen folks, for just a bit of early Sunday morning fun, and to break any tension that might be building up, it is possible that the new Morning Again in America has nothing to do with politics or the fact that Barack Obama’s programs promise a new day!  I would submit that the reason is because of the the competition to be the sixth sense.  So here is a small treatise on a subject in a much more less serious vein (now wait a minute, can I really say much more less all in one breath?):

Picking up some information while casually surfing the net when bored, I came across the following at various places.  It never hurts to learn something new.  So for your pleasure, or not…

Some people may be aware that a scene they are looking at has changed without being able to identify what that change is. This could be a newly discovered mode of conscious visual perception, according to a psychologist who discovered it. He has dubbed the phenomenon “mindsight”.

Mindsight may also be at work when someone goes into a room and senses something is different but cannot put their finger on what. “It could well be an alerting system,” he says. There is no reason the effect shouldn’t operate with other senses too, he says. Knowing someone is behind you may be the auditory equivalent. 

Mindsight is not simply a precursor to normal visual perception, it is argued, because there seems to be no correlation between how long it takes someone to feel the change, and the time taken to identify what it is. The two sometimes happened almost simultaneously, while at other times the subjects did not report seeing any difference until seconds after they were aware of it.

Also buzzing about for the coveted spot of the sixth sense is the hypothesis about the ability to anticipate and sense change, and the capacity to respond quickly and coherently.  This is called scenario thinking.  Also described as combined astonishing powers of memory and analysis with a strong intuitive power.  Seems like those who have combined knowledges, knowledges of many areas such as history, science, art, law, etc., develop advanced intuition and are able to imagine scenarios that truly challenge the mindsets of decision making. 

Then there is the challenger in the form of preliminary research on the various aspects described as a pheromone system. Seems like humans, like most animals, may exude a copious cloud of odorless chemicals called pheromones that send meaningful signals to other humans. Research is now going on that is suggests there is a cryptic sensory system that exists without conscious awareness yet may influence fundamental human behaviors involving sexual reproduction and the ability to discriminate between individuals.  We engage unawares in a sniffing exercise.  The top experts in the field of olfaction are skeptical but say they will keep an open mind (or nose as it were).

Finally is the study that the brain can sense the calories in food, independent of the taste mechanism, researchers seem to have found in studies with mice. Their finding that the brain’s reward system is switched on by this “sixth sense” machinery could have implications for understanding the causes of obesity.  Ooohhhh chocolate.

That is related to the newly discovered taste beyond the ordinary four of salt, sweet, bitter, and sour, called umami or what is called a ‘savory’ sensation.  Also called the yummy sense. When sensing the umami taste you smack your lips, drool, and savor the flavor.  Yummy.  Named by a Japanese chemist, Kikunae Ikeda who discovered the secret in glutamic acid that results in the breakdown of organic matter.  Ikeda was laughed at.  It seems, however, he laughs last, scientists have discovered humans do have taste bud receptors for L-glutamate and when something is soooo yummy in a non-sweet, sour, bitter, or salty way, it’s UMAMI!  Chocolate again!  Even if you are not interested, I am not fat!

Paracelsus:  If I am responsible for my own life then I am an adult, who answers for himself. 

A noble mentality, but who are you answering to?  As an atheist, I firmly believe in self-responsibility, and I go to great lengths to exercise that belief, but as a citizen of a group, and the world, I also have a responsibility to support the well-being of those groups.  It is a degree of responsibility that is the question and what we all debate.  I think KDelphi hits on it a couple of ways, with his boundary of freedom and those nonexistent choices one is born with.  These are ancient recognitions.  I think at bottom you are a very concerned individual and compassionate, it seeps in now and then whether you want it to or not, but you have reaction to the massa/slave arrangement that has described the violations to man’s personal sovereignty.  Many feel that sharp rasp of the chains.  It is the degree my friend, if I may call us that, of irateness that separate many within that set and solutions to reestablish assignments.  Who are the massas needs to be the target.  That position does not only describe particular tyrants that come in many varieties, but it describes social mentalities that become fascistic and totalitarian groups, sometimes the tyranny emanates from the socialistic aggregation.  That situation must be resisted as well. 

While I am of the more socialist bent, which is, I admit, odd for an atheist, who is supposed to be completely self-involved, I am not. I am a hybrid who sees injustice in the world, injustice dealt to others, and to myself but I see myself as part of a group.  Let Dawkins describe it as the selfish gene that finds survival within the community, whatever.  Primitive, or genetic as it might be, I think it foolish to think one can survive alone, call it the hermit syndrome as it were.  Independence is a high moral quality, it is noble.  But dependence in the right measure is also noble.

I think this answers your sentiment, If I am co-responsible then I am part of a larger group that is answerable for my actions, therefore I have to check in with my co-responsibles in order to make an individual action.  I have to ask what makes you think that the group (of which you are part and inherently have equal voice) when formed does not decide democratically what actions are answerable to the group and which actions remain autonomous?  No one outside the larger group determines what the members may or may not do.  There are many prohibitions yet you still think at this moment you have some modicum of self-governance.  It is an ersatz freedom that doesn’t rid you from thinking you live to a degree more liberated than you actually do.  Recognizing this, I understand the frustration you must feel and feel the absolute need to oppose, and I stand with you on that.  The struggle happens at both ends, however.  There is the end that contains those who want to preserve what they have and the end that has those who have less than needed for a decent life.  Isn’t that all that anyone deserves, a decent life?  Of course there are those on both ends who take advantage when and where they can.  But they have to be identified precisely. so as not to damage anyone on either end, and disassemble that section of society.  It is contained in that edict doctors must make as an oath, do no harm.

In my view, this is all worthy of discussion.

I suppose when I think of co-responsibility, I fear it will be as much a vice as the wanton liberty-taking. Somehow exploiting resources may be become an unsurmountable environmental issue for a small developer or businessman, but no matter for a wealthy plutocrat. The piece of land a small prospector can’t turn to mine production because he is greedy and polluting is an asset to the community if a large conglomerate takes hold of it. There is a certain hypocrisy to forbidding the efforts of small aspiring concerns, while giving carte blanche to an established money power.

As to inane speculation, when government destroys protective tariffs for the real economy at home, and allows a monopoly bank to abuse the credit of the country then you will have rampant speculation. On top of that banks are abusing moral hazard with federally funded insurance. The old system of banking may have had its problems with bank runs and panics, but the new system is no improvement. At least in the old system a cache of gold coins could be kept out side a bank for 50 years, and it would still buy the same basket of goods. You wouldn’t be any richer from dividends or interest, but you weren’t worse off as you would have been with Fed. Reserve bank notes.

I suppose you have a point when you speak of users of socialized health-care needing to obey orders not to smoke or do other unhealthy things. Those are the strings attached to accepting payment from government for your health-care. You then have to have faith in government to give you health-care that is not corrupted in some way by private interests or budget cutting or national security concerns. And I suppose if government was very serious about making sure you didn’t smoke, they could in some way monitor your activities. After all you have a co-responsibility to prove good faith. You don’t have to sign on to government health care with its contract of “rights and responsibilities”. You still have your right to privacy if you refuse government provided health-care. It is the same with education money from the government. You don’t have to sign with selective service, but you cannot accept government funding for education. It’s all part of being co-responsible.

Shenonymous..

”..cyrena - The concern for family and community is written in the Qur’an and I cannot believe there is any change in their attitude…”

~~~

Well, I admit that the entire billion of them haven’t decided to order birth control literature in bulk from whomever distributes the varying array of birth control products and advice on avoiding unwanted pregnancies.

HOWEVER…the change is happening, even if it’s very, very, very, slow. Just depends on the location I suppose, but I learned of this very active movement in many places (specifically the Middle East, because that’s what I was studying at the time) during a year of a fairly intense inquiry on Feminism within Islam, and it’s become far more advanced than we might realize. I think that only because our attention has been diverted by other stuff.

Anyway, I just said all of that to say that within and among the already educated population, (including the women obviously) this is has become more ‘considered’.

Doesn’t mean the paternal attitude has changed, but it might be surprising to view some of their recent decisions on this. Wish I had some references for you, but you know I’m separated from just about ALL of that stuff now. So, I’m just passing some of this along from memory.

Nikkie Keddie is still a great source, as well as some of the on-line magazines/journals from Middle Eastern sources.

Paracelsus—Yes, freedom, but your freedom ends where my nose begins, as they say.

If your actions have an adverse effect on me or the rest of society, I have a right to question them.There are varying degrees of “harm” , and, if a product/action/behavior has some positive aspect as well, that would be taken into consideratiopn.

But , please tell me the positive effects—for anyone—of keeping , say, marijuana illegal, and tobaco legal? Alcohol “legal”, but, in some states, anyway, “not on Sundays”? Certain corporate behaviors are merely called “free” to justify their existence.

If somone’s tobacco use, alcohol use and trans fats eating drives up health care costs, everyone pays.That is where, I believe , the concept of the “common good” comes in.

YOu can invest in anything you like, but, if it collapses the entire market, with innane speculation who is responsible? Who pays the people who were unknowingly harmed, that someone else decided to “take a risk” for?

I believe in freedom, but the term is used to justify alot of behaviors in US society that only profit a few. For instance, many people are absolutely convinced that we must continually “fight for freedom”, because it is said, that, “freedom isnt free”...well, what the hell does that mean? Many say that “freedom? is “god given”—then why do we have to “fight” for it?

Finally, it is true that everyone “chooses”, but everyone chooses from a different set and number of options. Not all options are open to everyone in society. The “meritocracy” is a myth. No one “chooses” to be born unintelligent or ugly,nor born into a family living in poverty—thus the myth of “all men are created equal”

Immature rubbish!  We are talking about co-responsibility.  No one wants to grab hold of your gonads, but the question is one of co-responsibility—a question that is obviously alien to your concepts of property rights uber alles.

What is this co-responsibility? If I am responsible for my own life then I am an adult, who answers for himself. If I am co-responsible then I am part of a larger group that is answerable for my actions, therefore I have to check in with my co-responsibles in order to make an individual action. (That doesn’t sound like an adult to me.) I understand that zoning is that sort of committee of co-responsibility. How far do you think co-responsibility should extend? Would I have to live my life according to some consensus most of the time? Part of the time? Do I have to ask, “Mother may I?” to smoke a cigarette or buy gold mining shares? Perhaps my career choices are a matter of co-responsibility? 

I think co-responsibility is one of Orwellian terms like “change agent”.

By Shenonymous, November 15 at 2:53 pm #

I have no argument about education and birth control.  Except it there should be more emphasis on male self-control instead of cultures mainly blaming females for pregnancies…
_______________________________

I couldn’t agree more.  I think it should begin with both parents educating young men, as well as young women, that they share equal responsibility.  Of course, in too many cultures, religion paints sex as a taboo subject with a corresponding adverse impact on population growth.

By Paracelsus, November 15 at 11:22 am #

In essence our gonads are not our own personal property, but are organs owned by the state…
__________________________

Immature rubbish!  We are talking about co-responsibility.  No one wants to grab hold of your gonads, but the question is one of co-responsibility—a question that is obviously alien to your concepts of property rights uber alles.

With increased population comes increased consumption.  With increased consumption comes increased pressure on ecological systems, endangering multiple species and eventually endangering all life on the planet.

Grow up!

I said I was going to “keep an eye on it”—I did. Especially to cann4ing, I stand corrected. Others too. I dont know if Obama wil buy it, but , here is the statement (meeting) just put out by PDA (Prog. Dems of Am) on single payer heatlh care.

I hope it works! Just wanted to be fair!

I am very glad to see it!

http://pdamerica.org/articles/alliances/2008-11-15- 13-11-21-alliances.php

ITW:  The Chinese are noted for their gelid, extremely callous and pragmatic attitude towards human beings.  There should not be any surprise.  I don’t see the world sending any criticisms to China for their horrendous practices.  As I said, nature would take care of what the world needs in terms of gender distribution if left alone.  Mankinds arrogance and greed changes the balance of nature.

cyrena - The concern for family and community is written in the Qur’an and I cannot believe there is any change in their attitude.  Their inherent imperialism is the most alarming aspect of their religion.  I am not sure what the demographics of their overpopulation is nor their attitude towards birth control.  I haven’t seen much evidence they ever had huge families and thus contributed to a world overpopulation.  I uneducated opinon is that is most likely because the general population have been kept at a low economic level and the harsh reality of their geographically scarce subsistance life style while the ruling class live in luxury. 

I have no argument about education and birth control.  Except it there should be more emphasis on male self-control instead of cultures mainly blaming females for pregnancies, and constant discussion within cultures about the effects of what large families do to their world, which is everybody’s world.  I think I am a dreamer on that one.  I don’t think it will take SOME education.  I think it will take A LOT education.  Ghettos are not just here in America.  Those poor people in Africa are starving and oppressed by political Islamists, are still having many many babies, the mortality rate is unbelievable.  There are pograms in many parts of the world, try India for one place, and Eastern Europe.  A more candid view of the situations in the world is really demanded.  Of course it has to do with people who don’t have basic care needed for survival.  What else does it have to do with?

Hi cyrena…it was Elvis Presley (lol). Called “In the Ghetto” , I think.

“On a cold and gray Chicago mornin’, another little baby chld was born, in the ghetto, and his mama cried
Cause if there’s one thing that she dont need its another hungry mouth to feed, in the ghetto..”

Pretty poignant for Presley, eh?

Dont let me interrupt, I have no opinion on this stuff, except to say I agree with you about the infant mortality rates, and would liek to know if Bush vetoing SCHIP coudl be considered infanticide.

Just thinking.

Sheynon…

”...It is a primitive cultural attitude which are just as hard to eradicate as it is religious attitudes….  A massive education and legal effort needs to be done where frivolous abortions and infanticide is subject to the same ramifications as it is for murder.”

~~~

The first part is certainly true, but there have been some successful challenges at eradicating such attitudes, in part by USING the religious foundation of the culture. That has been the case in many of the Muslim (including Arab) societies of late. In other words, they are becoming more pragmatically aware of the spiritual/religious obligations that require parents to provide for their families, and the practicality says they can’t provide for them when they have too many of them. This is actually noted in the Qur’an, and in multiple other Islamic texts, though I wouldn’t attempt to cite where. (somebody can though, I’m sure).

Meantime, at least part of the real education (from a general standpoint that can cross all cultures and traditions) is simply a better education on birth control and the prevention of unwanted pregnancies to begin with. Overpopulation is a problem, and only morons don’t get that.

But on the second part, (legal ramifications of infanticide and frivolous abortion)I don’t know. I don’t know that infanticide and frivolous abortion are even in the same league, since we have to deal with semantics here. But, the topic is certainly within my own academic scope. What to do with people who discard their infants and newborns? I’m not quite ready to suggest that they should be subject to the same legal status as murderers.

Quite honestly, I don’t know how much more ‘prevalent’ (proportionately speaking) this is than it was say 4 or 5 decades ago, but I DO know that some education and available resources would prevent these pregnancies from occurring to begin with.

Does anybody remember that old song, (I THINK Orbison did it) about “Another child born in the ghetto, and his mama crying?”(that’s just part of the lyrics). Well, THAT is still occurring all over the world, and right here at home. And, we can’t take care of at least 18% of these babies, and neither can their parents. Infant mortality, (even without the infanticide rates and other such horrors) are already as high here as they are in many 3rd world countries, and it has nothing to do with frivolous abortions or infanticide. It has to do with people don’t have basic care that humans need to survive.

And so it is..

Sorry She,

I pretty much thought you meant “funny” as “peculiar” not “funny” as “Ha-Ha”.

Still, I don’t think it’s peculiar at all, but, for the reasons I stated, a totally expected effect due to cold, ill-thought out policies by the Chinese government.

It is not that simple either Paracelsus:  It is purely a personal decision whether a family can afford to have one child or 4 children. I suppose if you want to frame it in terms of global warming then you could force taxation on families who reproduce too many CO2 emitters. I have my doubts on global warming.

Personal decisions are often dictated by religious beliefs and those beliefs give leave to have a dozen children.  I recall living in a suburban Huntington Beach 20 years ago and a fairly well-off family had 10 children.  They were Catholic.  Now sure they could afford that many children, but can an overpopulated world?  A social convention, viz., democratically debated, where it is encouraged rather than a matter of legal law, that the fewer children the better, would be a civilized way to have common self-control, and rather than a religion constantly encouraging more church members born so that they may keep filling their coffers and reason for existence.  I do not advocate any gonadal control (we can call it the GC effect), nor any penal control (a new use for the acronym PC), except self-control.  Surely men can develop some mental sense about that themselves?  Which has never happened heretofore. Now that would be the best population control and could even last for generations thus saving the world!  What an idea!  Shenonymo!  The amount of CO2 emitters is a zany concern.  Anyway, the trees would love more CO2.

cann4ing, yes you are right about China’s attitude toward female births and it has been a poignant human rights problem.  It is a primitive cultural attitude which are just as hard to eradicate as it is religious attitudes.  A massive education and legal effort needs to be done where frivolous abortions and infanticide is subject to the same ramifications as it is for murder.  While I do believe women own their own bodies, I do not advocate frivolous and wanton abortions either, meaning when it is without a doubt the result of consensual sex and the pregnancy has gone past viability as determined by a licensed Ob/Gyn then abortion is not an ethical or moral thing to do, with one qualification and that being if the life of the mother is at stake then under most circumstances I believe abortion is not wrong.  There will be a question in the case of irreparable comatose pregnant women, and so forth.  Yes I would put the burden of decision on the opinion of a licensed Ob/Gyn because people have many wily ways to convince an unscrupulous medical person to do many immoral medical things.  While not absolutely true, Ob/Gyns are less likely to risk their reputation and career in ending a not-frivolous pregnancy.  Further, it is not without suspicion that there will still exist illegal abortions and there will still be infanticide and there will still be criminal law to try to stem it.

ITW, using the word ‘funny’ can be interpreted several ways, it is, I admit, an ambiguous word.  I meant it in the sense ‘peculiar.’  It isn’t funny, as in ha ha!, it is meant that very thing you noted as the result of an unintended consequence.  My tongue-in-cheek remark about that practice being adopted world-wide is noted as such by my last biting sentence.  I know quite a few non-moronic men and I know they have created male progeny who also are non-moronic.  So relax.  But nevertheless you bring up some very important points about gender control and the history of that practice or encouragement.  Over time, nature will prevail if left alone!  But the greed of men almost always prevails!  Make that always prevails

Shenonymous, November 15 at 8:48 am #

Thank you cann4ing re the info about China’s one child policy.  Funny thing is that their plan has produced more boys being born than girls and by 2020 they expect the ratio to soar to 40-50 million more marriageable males than females!  Wow.  Hey guys of the world worried about there being more females than males, zip it up!  Hey, personally I like those Chinese odds.  The current pool of interesting guys in my age group is very small, well that depends on the definition of ‘interesting,’ of course.  It is possible to have a huge population of moron males.  Some precocious ladies I know would say that already exists.
***************************************

She, I don’t find it funny or odd. I find it sickening.  Couples allowed only one child are aborting females so they can have a son.  So the excess of males is totally expected.  This has been going on for 30 years so the shortage of marriageable age women has been around for several years. 

Given that, in the we-wish-it-existed-free-market, girls could then command a sizable dowry from families with only a boy to get him a wife.  The richest would prevail.  This, of course, would then make having girls more desirable and bring the ratio back to balance.  On the blackboard, in the theoretical world of economics.

What has happened in China instead is that a business has cropped up KIDNAPPING girls to force them to be wives to the sons.  Sometimes the boy’s family does the kidnapping, sometimes gangsters.  So, yet again, women are seen as nothing but commodities, breeding and housekeeping machines for the “princes”—the only son.  The girls’ lives are meaningless, their wants and feelings and families NOTHING next to getting the son a woman.

Once again the “Law of unintended consequences” has done more harm than good.

Overpopulation is self-limiting, and, to the shock if many nations, MORE people means more economic power.  Before the War, Hitler declared Germany needed “Lebensraum” for her 60 million people.  After the water, West Germany, half the size, had 60 million and PROSPERED like Hitler’s Germany never did.  India, with 1.1 or 1.3 billion people is more prosperous than when it had 750 million.

How is this possible? Because the productivity of more people, if marshalled, far exceeds their consumption.

What a cop out!  Your comment ignores the issue of overpopulation in the same manner the Bush regime ignored global warming. The fact is that the ability of the earth to sustain human life is not infinite.

I am not advocating forced abortions or forced pregnancies. It is purely a personal decision whether a family can afford to have one child or 4 children. I suppose if you want to frame it in terms of global warming then you could force taxation on families who reproduce too many CO2 emitters. I have my doubts on global warming. 

Whether we in the U.S. must emulate China, eventually looking to limits on the number of children a family can have, is an open question for democratic debate.

In essence our gonads are not our own personal property, but are organs owned by the state, and we must go to the state to have license to reproduce. It is like an automobile. We have given up our manufacturers issuance of origin to the state, so that we are a leaseholder of the car to the state, who must abide by contractual obligations for insurance and ad valorem taxes. That is an interesting argument. What you propose is the very kernel of what it means to be a slave.

By Shenonymous, November 15 at 8:48 am #

Thank you cann4ing re the info about China’s one child policy.  Funny thing is that their plan has produced more boys being born than girls and by 2020 they expect the ratio to soar to 40-50 million more marriageable males than females!
___________________________

If only it were that simple.  Chinese culture is such that parents want only boys, and, per our guide, there have been a good number of abandoned baby girls who do not survive, because the girl would be the only child that family would be permitted to have.

By Paracelsus, November 15 at 9:31 am #

I would leave sexual up reproduction as a matter of personal choice to the individual, not achieve it through stealth poisoning of the populace.

__________________________________

What a cop out!  Your comment ignores the issue of overpopulation in the same manner the Bush regime ignored global warming. The fact is that the ability of the earth to sustain human life is not infinite.

While we can differ on numbers, Tao, for example, taking the position that only that sustainability can be found in the life style of the 19th Century Lakota peoples, where I believe that vastly greater numbers can be sustained by the development of green technologies, I suspect neither of us maintains the delusion that Mother Earth, as he calls it, can sustain an infinite number of human beings.

Once one comes to grips with finite sustainability, one has to accept co-responsibility which entails more than individual reproductive choice.  But this, by no means, means an authoritarian approach of “poisoning the populace.”  It does suggest that the idiocy of “abstinence only” education advanced by the likes of Sarah Palin must be abandoned, and right fast.  Whether we in the U.S. must emulate China, eventually looking to limits on the number of children a family can have, is an open question for democratic debate.

Oh I don’t know Paracelsus, I live too far away from a public library and besides I use all my extra pennies (of which there are few) on books, good music, and films since I also live too far way from any culture to get really involved.  There isn’t even a decent or indecent bookstore ‘round here.  Ergo, Amazon shopping.  I have books in every room of my wonderful old house including the kitchens and bathrooms and both art studios, and have built over a hundred and thirty feet of shelving.  The literary world will survive on just me alone I sometimes think.  I haven’t been inside a university for over three years, but I am still able to access the library and online downloading services as well as get in the mail interlibrary photocopies of certain hard to get journal articles or even books if I choose.  But I choose not to get the books because it is a PIA to have to send them back.  So my personal library grows and grows exponentially.  Amazon is an amazing way to buy used books, dvds and cds.  And if clever enough to read all the offerings can get new or next to new copies of all such paraphernalia very cheaply.  The S&H;is cheap enough too considering the price of gas and distance needed to find stores.

I won’t keep defending BR as he is all right by my bones.  And Huxley is always fascinating to review now and then.  However too many others beckon, as Socrates would say, too many other beloveds.

If I could figure out how to copy my old cassettes and VHSs to my computer I’d make you a pirated copy of the Sadie Thompson movie and send it to you.  I’m in the middle of being able to do that but I am not the greatest wizard with this equipment and software.  It is arcane Old Greek to me!

Errata

It would be hard to tell that she was at the event horizon of her dementia from watching her act.

We don’t have to be really old to remember Rita.  I love Rita Hayworth, the most beautiful broad ever in show business.  Too sad she succumbed to Alzheimers.  Saw a few of her old movies, even have her Sadie Thompson.  Uh, before you get out your hammer and nails, make that ‘Miss’ Sadie Thompson.  Such a good movie about mind control or attempted religious brain washing that didn’t work!  Horray for Sadie!

I have too see that. I am a big fan of old movies. She was very young when did come down with it. Carol Burnett was very kind to invite her onto her variety show. They patiently nursed the lines to Rita in one sketch. It would be hard to tell that she was at even horizon of her dementia from watching her act.

@ Shenonymous

First of all dear heart, you do not answer the question of what YOU would do about overpopulation.

I would leave sexual up reproduction as a matter of personal choice to the individual, not achieve it through stealth poisoning of the populace.

As to the humanity of BR in regard to scientific society, that issue is perfectly murky as BR has deniability, and a faux objective and discursive style. If you back Dr. Pianca in a corner on the monstrosity of exterminating the human race, he will reply that the prospects are pessimistic as humanity is too corrupt to manfully deal with the problem. (This is paraphrase as the adjective manfully was my idea. ) So there is a certain evasiveness. But don’t worry, for as Rahm Emmanuel once said, “You are all part of the circle of love.”

Can I pin BR down as an inhuman philosopher? Not exactly, but his enthusiasm for the eugenic and dysgenic prospects for a better world frighten me. He seems like the cinematic serial killer who lets out a chilling cryptic remark or goes over into manic discourse when provoked by a small insult. Then he composes himself by saying, “All this is theoretical of course.” Chilling.

As to the tenacity of my mind, I think I have extracted some unique material to the internet from my own copies of BR’s two books on the sociology of science. I wish I could update my library with Aldous Huxley’s ravings as they make good end pieces to BR’s mad fantasies. But in due time… I assume you have benefit of a university library, and it seems you are taking full advantage. I only have recourse to my public library, and I often have to make interlibrary loans to get what I want. And then there is Amazon. I fear I will have to build a south wing to my apartment to contain so many books. My landlord would not like that.

Thank you cann4ing re the info about China’s one child policy.  Funny thing is that their plan has produced more boys being born than girls and by 2020 they expect the ratio to soar to 40-50 million more marriageable males than females!  Wow.  Hey guys of the world worried about there being more females than males, zip it up!  Hey, personally I like those Chinese odds.  The current pool of interesting guys in my age group is very small, well that depends on the definition of ‘interesting,’ of course.  It is possible to have a huge population of moron males.  Some precocious ladies I know would say that already exists.

Paracelsus, Paracelsus, Paracelsus! If you click your heels three times you will be back in Kansas!  First of all dear heart, you do not answer the question of what YOU would do about overpopulation.  But no matter, that is your usual ruse when you have no creative answer of your own.  Then, not having to got to a library, since I own both BNW and BNWR, what Huxley said is really unimportant though prescient as it was, since much water has flowed through the Ganges, as it usually does unless the floods are happening, and there have been many many more important crystal ballers and people exterminating shamans before and since Huxley. Try Thomas Malthus’s 1798, theory of overpopulation and for more recent, Werner Fernos, 2004 “Investing in Women:  Poverty Alleviation”  and his book “Gaining People, Losing Ground.”  There are others if you care to look but in-depth research seems out of your reach.  You don’t need ruby slippers, you need a tenaciously inquiring mind. 

With regard to my beloved Bertrand, yeahwell, he was one of the most brilliant minds ever to grace this planet.  What have you written that has had even an eighth the impact on the world?  If you read carefully, and I suspect you read for only what you want to see (a chronic human affliction, I myself am not vaccinated against it) you would see that he “describes” what science is egregiously capable of, and he does not ever recommend any of it.  S’il vous plaît show where he says “Do this!”

By Paracelsus, November 15 at 2:01 am #

Question is:  What would you do about overpopulation?

________________________

Future?  China already has in place a strict policy limiting couples to one child, except in rural areas where they permit up to three.

Question is:  What would you do about overpopulation?

Instead of cherry picking certain paragraphs out of context, it is suggested the far nobler thing to do is to read both of Russell’s two books mentioned.  For that matter, read all of his books.  Then a better perspective of what Russell thought would possibly be grasped.

I was able to check out Brave New World from the library, I found the idea of fetuses in barrels getting different levels of care so as to produce beings with purposeful lives frightening. I don’t think humanity should ape the reproductive cycle of termites or bees. I have reproduced another extract that I found nightmarish from BR.

I think, therefore, that there is hardly any limit to the departures from traditional sentiment which science may introduce into the question of reproduction. If the simultaneous regulation of quantity and quality is taken seriously in the future, we may expect that in each generation some 25 per cent. of women and some 5 per cent. of men will be selected to be the parents of the next generation, while the remainder of the population will be sterilized, which will in no way interfere with their sexual pleasures, but will merely render these pleasures destitute of social importance. The women who are selected for breeding will have to have eight or nine children each, but will not be expected to perform any other work except the suckling of children for a suitable number of months.

Right there in the extract is a proposal to sterilize 75% of the women and 95% of the men. In effect most of humanity will forever be martindales or be like the terminator seed in human form. The traditional human family is gone! Humanity will be reduced to breeder stock under this paradigm. Genius, creativity, and individualism is bred out of pedestrian humanity. If you read BNW, you would know that humans would be determined to be alphas, betas, gammas, deltas, and epsilons from the very start. The new technologies show every indication of putting this sort of society into operation. The day of wild human being with passion and survival instincts will be gone under such a future. That is what this global financial collapse is about: reengineering the species as a slave species for the global elite.

It is curious what is your problem Paracelsus?  Are you taking issue with Bertrand Russell and Aldous Huxley or population control?  If it is those older gents, so what if they did have some population control in mind?  Though the way you characterize them shows some odd bias.  There have been all kinds of literature on the subject.  On the other forum on illiteracy, Smoliar mentions a much more graphically sinister sci-fi story by D. M. Kornbluth, The Marching Morons that is about population control.  Question is:  What would you do about overpopulation? 

Instead of cherry picking certain paragraphs out of context, it is suggested the far nobler thing to do is to read both of Russell’s two books mentioned.  For that matter, read all of his books.  Then a better perspective of what Russell thought would possibly be grasped. 

Do the same with Huxley.  BNW and BNWR are prescient and still are worthy reads even after 40 years.

We don’t have to be really old to remember Rita.  I love Rita Hayworth, the most beautiful broad ever in show business.  Too sad she succumbed to Alzheimers.  Saw a few of her old movies, even have her Sadie Thompson.  Uh, before you get out your hammer and nails, make that ‘Miss’ Sadie Thompson.  Such a good movie about mind control or attempted religious brain washing that didn’t work!  Horray for Sadie!

On Injections, Drugs and Chemicals

Page 259 The Scientific Outlook

”... Perhaps by means of injections and drugs and chemicals the population could be induced to bear whatever its scientific masters may decide to be for its good.”

@ FENWICK

What I had read from The Impact of Science on Society was a proposition that some global government would have the authority to meter foods to various nations of the earth as a way to discipline population growth. This idea was proposed by BR on Page 111,

“..
The population of the world is increasing, and its capacity for food production is diminishing. Such a state of affairs obviously cannot continue very long without producing a cataclysm.

To deal with this problem it will be necessary to find ways of preventing an increase in world population. Ifthis is to be done otherwise than by wars, pestilences, and famines, it will demand a powerful international authority. This authority should deal out the world’s food to the various nations in proportion to teir population at the time of the establishment of the authority.”

As to Obama, I think he came at the perfect time to implement momentous change. We are about to enter a tremendous depression, a terrible crisis, which would be be an opportunity to implement change that people in normal times would find repellent.

Yes, c4, I have to apologize for the BR and AH business, I was reacting to our dear friend P.  But I guess, their views on overpopulation could be stretched to be relevant to this forum.  The information on gender ratios was also a tease but I think I resisted all the research I’ve done on the subject because of the very reason you noted.

“Put the blame on me baby,
Put the blame on me, boy
Put the blame on me, baby,
Put the blame on me”

Anybody remember Rita Hayworth?

As to the use of eugenics in a scientific society, I think BR’s The Scientific Outlook is the most explicit of two books he wrote on scientific society. I give you an excerpt from page 253 of Scientific Outlook,

“I think, therefore, that there is hardly any limit to the departures from traditional sentiment which science may introduce into the question of reproduction. If the simultaneous regulation of quantity and quality is taken seriously in the future, we may expect that in each generation some 25 per cent. of women and some 5 per cent. of men will be selected to be the parents of the next generation, while the remainder of the population will be sterilized, which will in no way interfere with their sexual pleasures, but will merely render these pleasures destitute of social importance. The women who are selected for breeding will have to have eight or nine children each, but will not be expected to perform any other work except the suckling of children for a suitable number of months.”

Mustve messed up—I am still getting replies to this.

Try again.

What a mutual admiration society…isnt it fun to just agree on everything?

Sorry for the double post, I tried to make an edit and just wasn’t fast enough.  Dang.

Yes, c4, I have to apologize for the BR and AH business, I was reacting to our dear friend P.  But I guess, their views on overpopulation could be stretched to be relevant to this forum.  The information on gender ratios was also a tease but I think I resisted all the research I’ve done on the subject because of the very reason you noted.  It is easy to be seduced onto another path and we have the best seducers on the net right here.  I don’t know if that is a compliment or not.  I am hoping it is not.

Shenonymo!  (Fenwick gave me that name and it has a sort of superheroine ring to it that I’m needing right now, I’ve been banned from teaching in my provincial town because I dared to say I voted for Obama. Forgive me while I use different means to lick my wounds).  I am optimistic that Obama will prove to be an amazing president.  There are facets to his diamond that don’t sit too well with me, but I’m willing to give him that spacetime to show his intelligence.

Yes, c4, I have to apologize for the BR and AH business, I was reacting to our dear friend P.  But I guess, their views on overpopulation could be stretched to be relevant to this forum.  The information on gender ratios was also a tease but I think I resisted all the research I’ve done on the subject because of the very reason you noted.  It is easy to be seduced onto another path and we have the best seducers on the net right here.  I don’t know if that is a compliment or not.  I am hoping it is not.

Shenonymo!  (Fenwick gave me that name and it has a sort of superheroine ring to it that I’m needing right now, I’ve been banned from teaching in my provincial town because I dared to say I voted for Obama. Forgive me while I use different means to lick my wounds).

Earlier, S, you complained that the discussion on the JFK assassination was off-topic, so now you’ve moved on to Huxley and Russell?  I’m not complaining; simply observing how these threads are subject to topic-drift.

I spent the first two weeks of October in China; came away with an appreciation for the combined impact of overpopulation and excess consumption. 

People were misled by the clear skies over Beijing during the Olympics.  The Chinese government shut down the coal-burning power plants three weeks in advance of the events.  As I was flying in, Beijing was one big, thick gray cloud.  “Fog,” I asked the steward.  “Uh-uh, smog.”  The kind of smog you feel in your lungs within minutes.  Its even worse in Xian, a “town” of some 42 million people.

Coal is the primary power source in northern and central China.  As I traveled up river from Chongking, all I saw was one coal barge after another. 

Those pictures you used to see of Chinese everywhere on bikes.  Forget it, everyone who can afford one drives a car—every make you can imagine, GM & Ford, but as our guide boasted, all manufactured in China.  Beijing & Xian were one huge traffic jam.  (And there’s nothing “Communist” about China—they’re more aggressively capitalist than the U.S.—something I previously did not believe possible.)

The only clean air was in Shanghai which is being powered by the still under construction Three Gorges Dam and where all cars are powered by natural gas.  But the Dam is already having an adverse impact up river, with rising waters eliminating farm lands. 

Hopefully, an Obama administration can lead by example with the development of green technologies—wind, solar, geothermal, wave—and places like China will follow suit.  If not, the hopes of heading off an ecological disaster are doomed to failure.

ITW:

Re “life imitating art” vis-a-vis books/films, thre is a 1975 (keep that year in mind) film called “Wrong is Right” that starred Sean Connery as a news anchor who becomes the unwitting conduit for an Arab terrorist group that has been causing havoc in NYC - including a suicide bombing in Times Square.  (Remember - 1975).  The premise of the film is that they have obtained a “suitcase nuke” and have hidden it somewhere in Manhattan.  Guess where it is?

Attached to the aerial on the WTC, which had just been completed.  (1975).

Spooky, huh?

Also, re Skull & Bones, although they are not an NWO group per se, they function as a “pool” for future members of NWO groups.

Re TC, my source is actually IN the TC.  (The only NWO group in which I have a direct source.)

Peace.

Reading Russell’s views on overpopulation he does not advocate any particular practice of eugenics or other forms except to discuss the disribution of food based on population if a world food crisis should appear.  In The Impact of Science on Society, he does describe clearly what are the terrible effects that could be expected if overpopulation went unchecked and what are some of the ways societies could or would exert control

Huxley in Brave New World, describes what kind of a world it could be if controls were not even considered. According to the UN, if the entirety of Earth were to have the same level of consumption as the average American or Western European, it would require three planet Earths to support the human population.  Huxley constructed a tiered caste system which uncannily resembles today’s rich to poor classes.  Huxley counted on time to develop solutions and had no idea the dystopian society would develop so rapidly.  On the other hand, he describes in Brave New World Revisited three eras:  A world of too much order, one where too little existed; and the one that struck a “happy” medium.  He had hoped an algorithm could be produced that would describe the better way to control population.  I didn’t read what that algorithm would be.  In May of 1998, Herbert Stein thought Huxley didn’t get it right, thought that while Huxley’s brilliant mind was right in the growth of population he was wrong in about the economic crisis he predicted.  But we can see that today, Stein was wrong and Huxley was right.  The entire world is on the brink of a deep depression.  Furthermore Stein was wrong again about Huxley’s fear that a manipulation of human minds by modern media would occur.

Thank you, P.  Here is a website to make you laugh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI6TZPRz0pk
then the next one is also super
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkqqMPPg2VI&feature =related

Paracelsus,
A story on the Boston media last night was about young girls reaching puberty, prematurely, growing breasts in the second grade.  The doctors suspect it’s caused by hormones in milk and in skin lotions.  The girls are now under some treatment where they are being injected monthly with, I think, testosterone.
Taleb, author of the Black Swan, said on a news show a few weeks ago that the world could be faced with massive starvation as a result of a large population and a natural disaster or some miscalculation.
The increase in wealth in the past thirty years has been accompanied with an explosion in population.  Now, it seems that zero population growth might not be the answer.
As Maani pointed out on another thread, these are the types of issues that a group like the Trilateral Commission would write a white paper on. 
It would be ironic if these people who have assumed themselves to be gods and have defined themselves as all powerful will be foiled by the internal contradiction, “If you are all powerful, can you create a problem that you can’t solve?”

Brave New World -AH, and the Scientific Outlook -BR, and the Impact of Science -BR.

Oh, FENWICK, I checked out that brasschecktv.com.  How miserable must the world get?  Killing Kids for Christ?  What could be more loathesome than repugnant?  I cannot find adjectives strong enough to express my disgust. 
Thus sayeth Shenonymo!  Hey, I could give Neitzsche a run for his money!  Godlets are Dead!

Shenonymo!  I love it, thanx Fenwick, that is something I can use!  You are a crafty debble. 

Russell and Huxley, two of my favorite guys!  Care to give me those citations, Paracelsus?

Bertrand Russell and Aldous Huxley openly speculated on reducing the population through injections, water additives, and so on.

Report this.

I was wonderin’ if you were gonna take that lyin’ down.  I’ve thought of a war cry you could use for your posts, especially, if you go on a tirade.

SHENONYMO!

As my friend-from-Kentucky’s mother used to say, “I think I’ll go lie down.”

By Shenonymous, November 14 at 12:38 pm #

Way…ell, is Watt stealing Watts thunder?  Seems to be a bullshit artist of the first order.

By Paracelsus, November 14 at 12:35 pm #

@ Shenonymous

It is Watt, not Watts, Gracie.

Report this
By Shenonymous, November 14 at 12:19 pm #

Is one person’s reality the same as another’s?  Isn’t that a primal question?  Alan Watts died November 16, 1973.