defacto7
defacto7's JournalI certainly can agree that the origin
of greed is fear of deprivation, but there is an type of greed that has developed in recent centuries and is very common and expanding having little or nothing to do with fear. This greed is sociopathic and those who possess it have no apathy or guilt neither do they fear loss or concern for their property. They find pleasure or at least a passive peace in knowing others fear them and depend on them. They may even find it entertaining in knowing others envy their possessions. These types are mostly at the highest levels of world economic dominance but more recently are all across the spectrum from middle wealth to the highest.
If they were posed with loss it's possible they could digress to fear but actually it's unlikely because they wouldn't be able to comprehend it.
That's the most dangerous and unyielding type of greed. It has no interest in average people except as part of their possessions. It's an increasing phenomenon unfortunately and dominant in upper banking, corporate and background political controls. In America and also the Middle East, there are some religious systems that promote it through the idea that they are chosen of their deity to be in a position of power therefore they fear no man.
Greed has evolved beyond its origin.
In a lot of ways I would agree with your straightforward analysis.
But I neither think the OP's point of view nor a status quo point of view will suffice to reorder the balance of civilization to one that sustains peace. We can speed up a process or we can slow down a process, but the boat has already been torpedoed, we're just waiting for it to sink. Pessimistic it may be, but until we face the fact that the systems and methods of humans on this planet are not sustainable economically, politically or ecologically we will just be watching the horizon slowly rise.
Bill is a great communicator...
I have to admit, there is something I forget at times concerning believers, and Bill made this plain:
"I just want to remind us all there are billions of people in the world who are deeply religious, who get enriched by the wonderful sense of community by their religion," said Nye, who wore his trademark bow tie. "But these same people do not embrace the extraordinary view that the Earth is somehow only 6,000 years old."
It is easy for non-theists like myself to put believers into a smaller box than many deserve. As an atheist I am concerned more with education, human advancement, and survival of all life than I am with the beliefs themselves. In politics, many politicians have bowed to a few moneyed extremists and have taken a position of authority for the advancement of those extremists who hold a very narrow view of reality or use narrow views to control an uneducated population. With the explosion of that mindset it is easy to be narrow and mistake believers as being one entity rather than being diverse.
What we need is education based on reality so people can make decisions without being cowed into ignorance. If their view of the universe includes religious views that respect the rights of others to have their beliefs and the right to non-belief, then the world is all the more colorful for it.
Thanks Bill for helping me to keep that in perspective.
I rarely share my general opinion
because I will admit the CT value of it is pretty far out there. I am very science oriented but there are issues concerning all the perplexing, contradictory decisions by the bureaucrats and ultra wealthy in the world that sometimes leads me to less scientific or reasonable conclusions. In a nutshell, I think the powers that be know exactly what is happening to the environment, the masses, the old systems of government and civilization in general and I think there is reason in the madness. They are basically hoarding and preparing to protect the ultra few, hunker down and wait out the catastrophe they and their ancestors have dug us all into. It would serve their multi-generational ego to be the sole survivors, the remnants of humankind. Whether their progeny will be able to stick it out that long is hard to say; I say not. But in the end, the earth wins and humankind will have been a very short lived virus that finally purged itself from existence.
That's about as dismal as I can get... but viewing our direction at the moment anything else is almost too pretty. But I'll fight for life. There's no room in my insignificant existence for a complacent party time end.
"Both somehow manage to go on, though. "
I think that statement is the crux of modern complacency. Somehow? What does that mean? It means you don't have any idea and really don't care. The science, the analysis, those are as real as we can come to knowledge of our future. Add to that history... history of the planet, of humankind, of extinction periods. All of those bring us even closer to knowledge of the possibilities we can encounter.
I understand coming to grips with inevitability. Some of us do that through fatalism, denial, some through religion, some through simple fear. But some, like myself want to know as much as possible and take a stand. The outcome of that stand could be the delay of catastrophe or the elimination of it... or it may just be a few chiseled letters on a stone that warn a future generation of beings in 20,000 years of the fate of our civilization... and hopefully it will say more than just, "I was here".
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Name: Defacto7Gender: Do not display
Hometown: Portland, OR
Home country: not sure anymore
Current location: depends on which proxy I'm using
Member since: Wed Aug 1, 2012, 01:44 AM
Number of posts: 13,485
