Power and Power.

[iconoclast]

Power and Power.

In ‘Energy for Survival – the alternative to extinction’ Wilson Clark discusses the relationship between power and power.
‘We are faced with a grave problem. Since the industrial revolution, the industrialized nations have been engaged in a race to increase energy consumption in order to increase population and build great bases of political power.’ (p.31)

In the face of the energy crisis and climate change – the first rational act of a global government would be to implement hydrogen technology. The infrastructure required is massive – far too expensive for capitalism to provide, even if democratic government could summon the will. It’s physically and technologically possible and would no doubt be a boon to humankind, but it’s not ideologically possible in that religiously founded political groups in economic competition cannot achieve it.

Assuming the adoption of science, the implementation of hydrogen would give us near boundless energy in increasing balance with the climate. If the motives Clark identifies are correct then they are served by the adoption of science and the implementation of hydrogen insofar as global government would be hugely powerful, unsustainable levels of population could be sustained while energy consumption rises across the globe. More obviously it would give government the ability to do vitally necessary things that previously it couldn’t do – but it will not be the same kind of power. Directed by science in the course of survival, the enormous power of global government will be non-polluting.

These factors make claim on the properties and attentions of the aforementioned religiously founded political groups. It is inherent to our situation that global government be founded on level ground where all can meet. Scientific knowledge is valid of reality and the same to you as to me. It provides knowledge of the problem and the possibility of a solution. Indeed, it offers many solutions and great understanding. It is the way and the light.

[Fido]

Perhaps I should give this more thought. I think your author might have. We are running into serious population issues that energy alone cannot solve. The Catholic Church which as always held democratic cards is perhaps the last organization to believe that people are power, while, since the industrial revolution every other organization of societies have believed that guns are power. I think the example of Europe and America suffice to show that while luxury and excess can be physically satifying they are ultimately spiritually unsatisfying. For this reason, the natives who are former conquerors have fewer children to enjoy more luxury while those who have no luxury have children as their sole luxury. If we can, for the most part, have only good things by having less children we have less children, and enjoy life less. It is a rot that extends from the top to the bottom in society, and depopulation played a significant part in the decline of both Greece and Rome, and will destroy us. It is too late to close the doors on the Spanish; and it is too late to give our lives meaning. Waste, squandering of natural resources, wasting of our lives and the lives of others in no sense adds meaning to our existence like standing up for universal justice might. So we justify taking and having at the point of a high technology gun, but you see how well we do when the dirty business of war becomes a game of attrition. We have to give our lives meaning because that meaning has been robbed out of them.

Through law, through religion we have to give our lives meaning because we are so demeaned. Is an American life really worth ten Muslims? For that man who drives a bomb down town Iraq, the question of meaning never comes up. We try to say his life is meaningless, and to make his life meaningful to us, he gives his life to take lives that do mean something to us: our own. But we are throwing money and lives into a bottomless pit. What is it for but energy? If the telivision and the lights went out and we would have to snuggle up, and live our own lives instead of the lives we are seeing lived on t.v., we might have to mean something.

Now we stand a much greater chance of dying by suicide than by terrorism, but we do not drop bombs on the cause of suicide. Rather, the more we take what is not ours to enjoy lives without merit and meaning the sooner suicide will seem a good idea. How many of us would be alive tomorrow if we really had to face those who suffer for our pleasure? How many of us would have clean hands if we faced those who make us suffer for their pleasure? We do not have to live like so many rich Romans eating to vomit, and vomiting to eat. We could be like the man on the watchtower, knowing none of them along the line has an idea of its worth.

[iconoclast]

Dear Fido, I cannot agree that it's too late to give our lives meaning - and while i recognize that your struggle with these ideas has integrity, 'shutting the door on the Spanish' is a sentiment i find appalling in the extreme.
the problems we face are global in dimension and isolationsim is the problem, not the solution. Nations, national identity - leading to racism prevent cooperation on vital questions that humankind must answer, and answer correctly or become extinct. Philosophy is the love of wisdom and requires that we abandon prejudice - survival requires that we abandon racism and cooperate to survive. iconoclast.

[Fido]

Originally Posted by iconoclast

Dear Fido, I cannot agree that it's too late to give our lives meaning - and while i recognize that your struggle with these ideas has integrity, 'shutting the door on the Spanish' is a sentiment i find appalling in the extreme.
the problems we face are global in dimension and isolationsim is the problem, not the solution. Nations, national identity - leading to racism prevent cooperation on vital questions that humankind must answer, and answer correctly or become extinct. Philosophy is the love of wisdom and requires that we abandon prejudice - survival requires that we abandon racism and cooperate to survive. iconoclast.

Well, I don't want to break your appaling barrior. It is a problem with capitalism, that we exploit other countries and take their wealth and sooner or later some of theirs show up here looking for it. Do you think they want to leave home? Do you think they are happy here? Do you think the land of milk and honey isn't a little rank, too much chrome and too little know how, too much shine and not enough mind? England does not look like old England but has people from all the old colonies. And England is one of the richest countries, but the average guy is third world, talking trash, and listening to hip hop. I have Spanish in my family, my grandaughter, and she did not invade, but was invaded, which is to say, she is part Puerto Rican. But, if the Mexicans and Central Americans are made miserable where they live, and come here to act as slaves and strike breakers, driving down wages, and driving down working condition then they are what the slaves were in Rome. Now, a slave is not especially productive, but they were only more productive than the Roman farmers so that over generations they could drive native Roman farmers from the soil. On the other side of that coin is the great power and wealth that slave labor created which did not improve those who owned it, but made them rotten. And when the top of society is rotten the bottom follows. People in a luxury society feel cheated if they do not enjoy the luxury too, so they will sell their futures to have their present.

We stopped having more children when the government promised social security. We gave up the greatest wealth for the cheapest lie. After fifty years of constant pressure on wages we can have luxury, but only if foreign children slave for us or Mexican immigrants slave for us here. I love diversity, but to affect social change one must over come diversity and difference. The Romans said: divide and rule. I cannot celebrate the division of American U.S.. The presence of slaves and former slaves means unity is unlikely, and so change is unlikely, and this old dog cart will go flying off the cliff of time unhindered. All this while luxury disipates and demoralizes us. NO! I do not believe this is a happy time for us. Our lives are all fat and no meat.

I love culture, and in a sense it has been the focus of all my study. But revolutions have to begin some where, and that is why the West so attacked China and Russia, for fear that an established revolution would spread. This last great hope of mankind could better bring revolution to the world if the world were not already here, getting in the way. It is our world. We can all live here. We just cannot all live HERE.

[iconoclast]

Dear Fido, Might i invite you to step outside the false conceptual schemes of religiously founded national groups in capitalist economic competition - for you are, as if trying to disprove the exitence of God using only biblical concepts, unable to make sense of it because your basis of analysis is false. iconoclast

[Fido]

Originally Posted by iconoclast

Dear Fido, Might i invite you to step outside the false conceptual schemes of religiously founded national groups in capitalist economic competition - for you are, as if trying to disprove the exitence of God using only biblical concepts, unable to make sense of it because your basis of analysis is false. iconoclast

wot?

Could you repeat your question in English m' amigo?

[iconoclast]

Fido, you're trying to add apples and oranges. iconoclast.