Social Destruction?

[can't sit still]

Guilty as charged, but, i did try to end each post with a couple of paragraphs that were germain to "social destruction"
Disease does cause us to be more cautious about social interaction.
The other thing that I see is the great increase in FEAR .
Remember when it was easy to hitchhike? Remember when you didn't worry a bit as long as your date was on the pill? Remember when milk cartons had nutricional info?
Remember when the post office just had a couple of pics of criminals.

Remember when electronic games had 2 paddles and lots of lights and buzzers instead of 50 ways to commit graphic mayhem ? Remember when cop shows had Barney Fife instead of legions of murderers?
Remember when director Sam Peckenpah was considered too graphic with his portrayal of violence? Elvis was considered to risque?

In the quest for ratings, MSM has taken the ugly, the brutal, the sadistic, etc and shoved it under our noses to be absorbed into our psyche.
Hellraiser may be more interesting than Leave it to Beaver, but, what does it do to our minds? If we are constantly inundated with non-stop mayhem, does it become more acceptable to our M.O. ?

It's common for soldiers to be traumatised by being exposed to contiunual violence.
I see lots of cops that can get either traumatised or numb.
What does the continual exposure to onscreen violence do to the rest of us?
Does actual violence become as unreal as onscreen violence? I read about a 17 Y.O. boy who killed his 12 Y.O. sister because she interrupted his video game. He slammed her with the wrestling moves he had been watching.

Divorce is at 50%. Are we too mean? Are we asking too much,,,expecting too much?
Has MSM convinced women to hold out for a true "knight in shinning armor"?
Has electronic preocupation destroyed our ability or desire to interact socially?

From what I see, population growth is negative where women have equality. That includes japan, western europe and some of the Russian Federation. OZ reversed this trend by paying women to have babies. Germany was talking about paying.

Israel has a low rate in the Jews and a high rate in the Arabs. The US has a low rate in "modern" families and a high rate in hoseholds where women are in more of a secondary position; Mormons, Amish, 1st gen. latinos.
The future belongs to the fecund.
I need to get away from this keyboard and go interact!!!!

[Fido]

Aedes; you are full of dirt. Smallpx has not been eradicated until you can get the governments of this world to cut loose of what they have in the hopes of making something worse. It is not all a moral question, but the moral question does play into the political question. The fact is that once you have removed some one from their political rights, and they have no money to buy your goods, or they refuse slavery, or even as slaves they cannot be made profitable; then, they can not die quickly or horribly enough. You want to keep people alive so they can breed themselves even quicker into a state of exhaustion, or extinction. Fine, but there are others who have caculated the value of a human being to the cent before they are even born. I ask you; how many would you save if there were no money in it? None, because you could not even get there if some one were not making money on your trip. It is all about profit, and never about people. If it were about people, they would have choice in their lives rather than chance.

[Aedes]

Originally Posted by Fido

Aedes; you are full of dirt.

You've seen a small part of my credentials. Please share your experience and authority on the subject. And do so in a way that doesn't involve ad hominem, if you can.

You want to keep people alive so they can breed themselves even quicker into a state of exhaustion, or extinction.

No, I just believe the reams of evidence about the effect of disease on population growth, DALYs, QALYs, and national fiscal health expenditures that argue overwhelmingly for a primary destabilizing role of disease on politics and economics at a local, national, and international scale. I also believe the reams of evidence that show that disease prevention and management will slow population growth and stabilize population turnover.

As for profit and not people, every single trip of mine to a developing country has been funded by academia, had no industry or profiteering partnerships, had no means to collect money from the work done, and did not pay any of us anything. I've sacrificed a tremendous amount of potential income to do this for a living, as has everyone I know in the field. You're levying the same boring critique that angry teenagers do against the IMF and World Bank -- which may have some validity against those bodies, but is hardly applicable to my work or my positions.

[Fido]

Originally Posted by Aedes

You've seen a small part of my credentials. Please share your experience and authority on the subject. And do so in a way that doesn't involve ad hominem, if you can.

No, I just believe the reams of evidence about the effect of disease on population growth, DALYs, QALYs, and national fiscal health expenditures that argue overwhelmingly for a primary destabilizing role of disease on politics and economics at a local, national, and international scale. I also believe the reams of evidence that show that disease prevention and management will slow population growth and stabilize population turnover.

I don't know whether you are putting you chickens before their eggs or your cart before your horse. Sure poverty causes people to breed. Yet, poverty and lack of social control are indistinguishable. You never find one without the other. People put off the solution to their problems with children at the very moment they intensify their problems. To think that children will be some solution is illogical, but hope full. I used to hunt deer with a shot gun. Usually my second shot was buckshot. Like the Indian said: When you hear a shotgun going off, boom, boom, boom; they didn't hit nothing. To throw out a bunch of double odd buck at a deer long gone is no way to hunt or live, but it is hope full. What we want for ourselves we should demand for them. One good doctor said: Take the handle off the pump. It was not a great act requiring an act of parlament. It was common sense. Now, disease is a natural phenomenon. If the pressure of population is driving people to live where they should not, then let them die. Except, -that they, in dying might incubate something that will kill all of humanity. So ask the question: Is it not better to treat the person, treat the society, and treat humanity rather than treating the disease? If You treat the disease, more children will be born, and more will die, and more yet will throw children into life looking for a piece of personal immortality. How do you ever expect to fix the larger problem concentrating on a symptom. I try to help people who ask me for help too. I am not a monster, except at halloween. But I do look at the whole problem, because it is a whole problem, and one we are a part of and a cause of, and one we suffer from even if we never know a moment of pain from it.
Sir, it is not an unfair attack to say what I said. You see that when governments get involved, and start thinking about their interests, they will always decide to keep something like smallpox alive even though that disease has killed so many good people that its total destruction would be a singular triumph for all of humanity. Only governments thinking of their own personal interests could keep such a scourge alive, but alive it is. And the support of such evil is not any part of a proper role for government. So, how can anyone blame the poor for making bad choices when they only have bad choices while those who know better make bad choices out of the desire for greater power through fear.

[can't sit still]

Fido said "support of such evil is not any part of a proper role for government"
I'm sure that you can't be implying that the US GOV would do anything immoral

Aedes, I have to take issue with you on the comment that reducing the infant mortality rate also results in a reduced birth rate.
Modern medicine has worked for a long time at reducing infant mortality in Latin America. I do not see a commensurate reduction in family size in the rural populations. The campesinos just keep pushing out the kids. The catholic church tells them to "have all the children that god gives you"

According to the World Fact Book, the average Ugandan woman has 8.2 children.
Indira Ghandi had an interesting observation; she said that if she could wish for something for all of her people, she would wish for televisions for everyone. She said that they would watch TV insted of fornicating.
There was a birth rate spike in NYC 9 months after a power blackout.

Maybe the poor just need entertainment centers to keep their population at sustainable levels.

[Fido]

Sir; of course I am not saying the U.S. would do anything immoral. What I am saying is that they are not able to consider doing, or do anything moral, except accidently. It is just like the good doctor treating disease when by doing so he accepts the inevitability of disease. If we could take the money out of disease we could end it. How is that possible when even then we would be faced with an absolute mountain of people who accept the power of religion, magic, technology, and the inevitability of fate in the battle with disease? If we could see the place that money plays in religion, magic, technology and fate, we could manage them single or together. People make money on illness. Others drive people into swamps for money just as others are driven into the confinement of the city for money. We might manage our cruelty to each other if we could all manage our personal madness; and it is that which grips us. This madness is the belief, held in the teeth of all evidence against it, that capitalism will produce good. Capital does not produce good, and so capital can be seen as any other religion or magic. Without the profit motive we have no reason to deny to any one control in their own affairs, nor knowledge of the consequences, which is to say, the knowledge to choose rationally. Throwing babies against a perilous future and living in a swamp is not a rational choice, but the only choice for some. To be moral one must make moral choices. For us as for them, choice is denied.

[can't sit still]

Fido, if you go back in time ,we didn't need money. As hunter-gatherers, earth provided security. Imagine yourself in the pre-agrarian days; EurasiaNet Civil Society - Turkey: Discovery of 12,000-year-old Temple Complex Could Alter Theory of Human Development

"Look at this", he says, pointing at a photo of an exquisitely carved sculpture showing an animal, half-human, half-lion. "It’s a sphinx, thousands of years before Egypt."

It was only after we distanced ourselves from an immediate food supply that we invented non-barter means of exchange. We distanced ourselves a bit from the security of hunter-gatherers.
It's over-simplification but, essentially, money represents security. Like any organism, we focus on survival and security. Money is a necessity to a non-agrarian, non-barter society.
We've been impovereshed by those who collect the fruits of our aggregate labor and use these fruits for their benefit not ours.

We believe that we own our property. You could have 20 acres of good land and get by fine. If we don't pay property taxes, GOV throws us off. You are not allowed to live if you don't pay.

Fido wrote "We have to be willing to disorganize to tear it down. We have to be willing to act as we see ourselves: as individuals. We don't have to do anything. We have to undo everything."

I find it difficult to envision a scenario where it is possible to undo everything without "undoing" society and security.
Do you have a framework in mind that would exorcise the more obvious evils of GOV without resulting major upsets to the production and distribution of food?

[Aedes]

Originally Posted by can't sit still

Aedes, I have to take issue with you on the comment that reducing the infant mortality rate also results in a reduced birth rate.

This has been shown AGAIN and AGAIN. Take issue with what I say all you want. But put your anecdotes aside and look at the scientific and demography literature. This is not even debatable. The strongest of all predictors for fertility rate and population growth are infant and child mortality rates, low education, and low age of marriage. And it's been shown again and again that reduction in infant mortality will lower fertility rates. Maybe you don't find it logical, but that doesn't matter -- it's true.

[Fido]

Originally Posted by can't sit still

Fido, if you go back in time ,we didn't need money. As hunter-gatherers, earth provided security. Imagine yourself in the pre-agrarian days; EurasiaNet Civil Society - Turkey: Discovery of 12,000-year-old Temple Complex Could Alter Theory of Human Development

"Look at this", he says, pointing at a photo of an exquisitely carved sculpture showing an animal, half-human, half-lion. "It’s a sphinx, thousands of years before Egypt."

It was only after we distanced ourselves from an immediate food supply that we invented non-barter means of exchange. We distanced ourselves a bit from the security of hunter-gatherers.
It's over-simplification but, essentially, money represents security. Like any organism, we focus on survival and security. Money is a necessity to a non-agrarian, non-barter society.
We've been impovereshed by those who collect the fruits of our aggregate labor and use these fruits for their benefit not ours.

We believe that we own our property. You could have 20 acres of good land and get by fine. If we don't pay property taxes, GOV throws us off. You are not allowed to live if you don't pay.

Fido wrote "We have to be willing to disorganize to tear it down. We have to be willing to act as we see ourselves: as individuals. We don't have to do anything. We have to undo everything."

I find it difficult to envision a scenario where it is possible to undo everything without "undoing" society and security.
Do you have a framework in mind that would exorcise the more obvious evils of GOV without resulting major upsets to the production and distribution of food?

What you are talking about is something very evident to me as a reader of Anthropology. You are talking about a change of forms, in this case, of economy; but a change in every case of forms of relationship. When people lived in small, honor societes, there was fairly constant warfare, and general warfare, when populations grew too large. Law, Western Law, which is only another form of relationship, has been introduced into societies in no sense aware of or prepared for the implication and consequences, and money is a part of that paradigm. I don't think history ever saw people dispossessed short of being killed. Now law does for many what war in the past could not, and that is to drive them to the margins of life. Money does not mean security, but poverty. Everyone has to live on today's dollar for example, but America has been sold yesterday. If you can control the money supply you can not only ruin the money, but an entire people, and controlling the money is easy when it is paper. So, if you want to rob from every widow on a pension, and every one living on an entiltment or fixed income, just inflate the currency and he will buy less for more until he is broke. America has been bought cheap and sold dear for a long time by the same class, and it has located both wealth and property in the same pocket, and so; the security of the rich is no more evident than the security of the poor which has evaporated with their wealth. For one thing, the rich will feast on the rich until only one is proclaimed King. But, for the poor, their security, their rights, and even their lives and the lives of their children will increasingly hang on the whims of the rich until property, wealth, and law have no meaning. For property to have meaning it must be owned. Property has no meaning for the poor. What they have is theirs, and is not yours.

No revolution is possible unless people are first willing to share their last bite with their neighbor. Revolution is as possible as people are willing to forget the past and get on with a new future. I would start with constituting a new government as if the old did not exist; and then I would vote it all soft power, the power to do good. The danger to people resulting from revolution comes from reaction. The danger to revolutions comes when they are taken over by ideas. Since revolutions are perilous, no one should hasten them. Just withdraw your support, your faith, and your hope that government will ever manage to deliver justice, tranquility, or general welfare, and start getting to know people around whose help you will need when everyone does as you, and turns away from the government for good.