Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Burning ghost]

Jan -

It looks pretty hopeless.

To you because you hear what you want to hear. You seriously think all the countries in the tropics will become uninhabitable in 5 yrs? I’m truly sorry you’ve had a disappointing life, but really it’s kind of fruitless to bemoan the failings of humanity whilst accusing other of being passive - I don’t think pure negativity and pandering to exaggerated predictions does much good.

If you wish to instill hopelessness you’re going to fail with me again and again and again and then simply die in a rage. Sorry my friend I don’t buy into thendark appeal of hopelessness. Therein lies a reason to sit back and do nothing.

Two steps forward, one step back. It’s a clumsy method, but it has great benefit. To some eyes I understand that it appears to be one step forward and two steps back; and occassionally it is. We’re still here and we’re not all completely ignorant or passive.

Like I said the generation that have been taught about the possible effects of human driven environmental disaster have only just hit their mid 20’s or early 30’s. After those the next generation is even more indoctrinated with a “green” mentality.

As for world powers doing nothing ... China halted the production of several coal power plants and lost billions of dollars (something largely impossible in western society due to corporate interest) and switched to nuclear and renewables.

Hopeless? No. A crisis? Yes. Solvable? Yes.

We’re living in extraordinary times at the birth of a global revolution. I have faith in humanity because I have faith in myself ... but I’m far from naive and I’ve seen enough of the world to know it’s going to be no easy task and that it never really has been at anytime in human history. The fact is people are, on a global scale, in the best position they’ve ever been in terms of health, education and wealth (and it is a fact.) Less war, less crime and more freedom. Maybe such advances are the cause of the environmental degredation and if so then tyranny will step up and quash civil society and bring in a temporary dark age so we can revaluate the situation, regroup and move on (presuming we stop short of killing each and every last person on Earth out of spite brought on by entranched pessimism and an ideology driven by feelings of “hopelessness” - I’m very cynical, but I refuse to buy into that kind of nonsense.)

[Jan Sand]

To visualize the rising crisis of ecology and the total economic militarization of the USA and the 30% rise of suicides in the USA and the huge loss of current living species and the worldwide forest fires and the death of much of ocean life and the immense loss of fertility in many humans etc.,etc., as my own personal mental delusion is right in line with the Trump administration but frankly, I cannot think that badly of you so something else must be going on. At the moment exactly what eludes me. and, believe me, I am deeply in love with this wonderful planet whatever I might think of humanity and its inept behavior. Of course, it is greatly distasteful to to look reality in the eye and I accept that is a bit tough. So it goes.

[Jan Sand]

Since there is little I can do to indicate the severity of the current situation convincingly I will not attempt further on this subject which is far from the approved topic. There is abundant information on the web as to the seriousness of the problem and it is up to each of us to become aware.

[Sy Borg]

Interesting debate. It encapsulates the kind of toing and froing I've felt within myself. Maybe that, but the again ...

The short to medium term prognosis looks bleak but once the dust has settled on this extinction event and a new sustainability is achieved I am optimistic that the survivors will be evolve to be extraordinary, as has happened in all prior extinction events.

In the meantime, many of us still enjoy a better lifestyle than our ancestors, but the trend is currently to the negative on many measures due to population pressure, which also brings a more inflexible, utilitarian approach to governance.

[Burning ghost]

Greta -

It isn’t currently “negative”. The only, and most disturbing, negative is the state of the environment and how we’re mis/managing it. Literally everything else, on a global scale, is quite clearly improving rapidly - the increase in general global prosperity is actually the leading factor for thr decline in natural habitats. We’re actually being too successful and only just coming to terms with the severe effect our prsoperity is having and has already had.

The bias of news coverage makes the world look as if everyone is starving and dying, like war is increasing and poverty spreading. The opposite in all these cases is true funnily enough. As humans we’re prone to stop and stare at car crashes ... it’s just the way we are and the increase in education globally is making many in a position to do something step up and do something rather than buy into the doom and gloom scenario some lazy nihilist is always willing to push out of anger and spite toward their own poor choices/circumstances.

We can focus on teh negatives and/or the positives. I just don’t understand the use of a defeatist mentality. Life is tough so let’s get on with it and sort **** out. Of course I also bemoan the state of teh world often enough myself but I’ve also trained myself to express a more positive outlook. This has effectively turned my life around and made me take on more than I did before and spread a more positive, yet cynical, view of things.

Maybe it’s all for nought ... maybe it isn’t. I go with the latter

[Jan Sand]

I am not looking for an argument and merely wish to point out that the bulk of current prosperity is accruing to an exceedingly small sector of humanity while, since WWII, millions of been slaughtered to the benefit of no one in the hopes of gaining control of resources and markets and to the massive destruction of all the elements of ecology that permit a life sustaining planet. The rare dying off of natural life on the planet has only occurred a few times like this in the history of the planet and it takes many millions of years to recover. In addition, the probable outburst of nuclear conflict at the hands of what can only be described as totally incompetent leadership is an occurrence that has never before faced this planet and recovery from that is almost impossible considering that life has never been able to accommodate itself to nuclear radiation. These are undeniable factual and not bases for argumentation. I am sorry, but I do not further want to discuss this.

[ThomasHobbes]

I am not looking for an argument and merely wish to point out that the bulk of current prosperity is accruing to an exceedingly small sector of humanity while, since WWII, millions of been slaughtered to the benefit of no one in the hopes of gaining control of resources and markets and to the massive destruction of all the elements of ecology that permit a life sustaining planet. The rare dying off of natural life on the planet has only occurred a few times like this in the history of the planet and it takes many millions of years to recover. In addition, the probable outburst of nuclear conflict at the hands of what can only be described as totally incompetent leadership is an occurrence that has never before faced this planet and recovery from that is almost impossible considering that life has never been able to accommodate itself to nuclear radiation. These are undeniable factual and not bases for argumentation. I am sorry, but I do not further want to discuss this.

.... And yet the region around Chernobyl is now flush with wildlife, since few humans would go there, and the recovery has been remarkable with little or no increase in mutations despite the fears.

[Jan Sand]

If you are interested in discussing radiation damage I advise you to consult experts in the matter. There is an interesting article which mentions your good friend Kierkegaard at https://www.globalresearch.ca/nuclear-r ... al/5501239 .which might help you deal with your rather strange understandings. Incidentally, it would be worthwhile to consider that Mars, which fascinates a few as a refuge from Earthly disaster has no atmospheric protection from the dangerous radioactivity which pervades outer space so habitation there would probably be underground for safety.

[Burning ghost]

You have no argument. The facts are things are getting better over all on a global scale regardless of the negative media coverage - the environmental state is one area that things look decidely bad, no argument there.

From the year 2000 governments got together with a plan to half world poverty by 2015 ... they achieved their target by 2013. You see this as a bad turn of events? Child mortality rates have declined rapidly, education is more widely available than ever before, health care is more readily available than ever before, the extent and reach of war zones has shrunk even further too, and women are gaining a foothold and slowly rising to political power in countries where merely 4 or 5 decades ago it would’ve been unthinkable.

If leadership was totally incompetent at every level of government we’d be living in anarchy. We’re not. None of this is me saying there are not parts of the world struggling a helluva lot - Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Bolivia, Sudan, The Congo, North Korea, Ethiopia, and Somalia and the one’s that spring immediately to mind. Regardless, things are not anywhere near as bad for people as they were a few decades ago let alone a century ago.

If you talk garbage then I’ll keep on going until you provide more contrast. Millions since WWII you say? How about prior to WWII? Was life peachy for the people then? Percentage how many people do you think died in abject poverty prior to WWII? The total number of people may have been less but that is no more than a false expression of the greater picture. This happens all the time in political propaganda where percentages are purposely ignored in order to paint a worse picture with cherry picked numbers.

To assume your lack of understanding let me put it like this ... if there is 1 murder among 100 in the frist year and then 10 murders following year among 1000 people do you believe this to be an increase in murder rates? More murders yes. More murders/deaths/whatever doesn’t mean an overall increase. Percenatages and proprtions need to be taken into account to paint a clearer picture of reality.

[ThomasHobbes]

If you are interested in discussing radiation damage I advise you to consult experts in the matter. There is an interesting article which mentions your good friend Kierkegaard at https://www.globalresearch.ca/nuclear-r ... al/5501239 .which might help you deal with your rather strange understandings. Incidentally, it would be worthwhile to consider that Mars, which fascinates a few as a refuge from Earthly disaster has no atmospheric protection from the dangerous radioactivity which pervades outer space so habitation there would probably be underground for safety.

I hardly think that a rather esoteric article that fails to mention Chernobyl by the self-styled "Global Research" website is of much interest.

Bout ten years ago, BBC Horizon broadcast a programme on this issue.

Fact is that in the region of Chernobyl nature has thrived from the absence of human habitation. And actually studies into the environs has shown a remarkable rate of recovery and scant little significance for mutations.

People still complain of fallout and problems in human populations, and economic impact, but it seems the wildlife both fauna and flora has doing very well thank you.

[Jan Sand]

"Kierkegaard said of belief that it becomes stronger the more impossible and threatened it is. And this seems to be rapidly coming true in the case of nuclear energy. The torture imposed on logic, reason and observational data by the advocates of nuclear power has now reached the level of clinical psychosis."

[Polaris]

In my view, art is simply that which privileges form over function. For a thing to privilege form over function means for that thing to a) have a structure of some kind and b) for that structure to be useless except where using it serves to alter the structure in question. Where a tool serves as an intermediary between its wielder and some object external to both, an ideal work of art lies at the end of a series; there is nothing that it exists in-order-for except itself. If one engages an ideal work of art, one is forever trapped as if inside a black hole. One can't even conceive of a way out.

[Robert66]

In the Op Scott wrote:

'... I would define art as expression through attractive symbolism. To use an example from above, the sculpture becomes art as opposed to just a piece of rock at the point when it expresses meaning from its creator.

What do you think? Can you provide a definition of art that is clearer, more elaborate or more accurate?'

That which is produced by artists.

Forget attractive, or beautiful; form, function, aesthetics. None of these make a jot of difference.

[Count Lucanor]

That which is produced by artists.

Forget attractive, or beautiful; form, function, aesthetics. None of these make a jot of difference.

I think Arthur Danto tried that and he was criticized, deservedly, for being a circular definition. What comes first, the artist or the art? Can I be an artist if I never produced anything?

[Count Lucanor]

In my view, art is simply that which privileges form over function. For a thing to privilege form over function means for that thing to a) have a structure of some kind and b) for that structure to be useless except where using it serves to alter the structure in question. Where a tool serves as an intermediary between its wielder and some object external to both, an ideal work of art lies at the end of a series; there is nothing that it exists in-order-for except itself. If one engages an ideal work of art, one is forever trapped as if inside a black hole. One can't even conceive of a way out.

What does function mean in this context? Many objects carry symbolic functions and their forms are subordinate to that necessity.