[Dukat_Reloaded]

I noticed she posted this artical today and she feels it's unfair that peakoil is happening to her and feels she is entitled to the american way of life. This sense of entitlement is a very ugly thing to see in a person, the world does not owe anyone a good life or anything at all for that matter. I've seen afew other posts here at P.O documenting this, usually the example is the collage grad who expects to graduate from collage, get a high paying easy job, marry, buy a house and car and live the easy life. Too me, thats absurd people thinking that way, but most people who take up higher education totally believe that it is their birth right to this life style. I will now post what was written on the other site. Source in comment section po survival

"
Subject: ...
Name: Whatever
E-Mail: Whatever@grrr.com
Location: Nowhere, Ontario, Canada
Date: 2005-10-01 04:45:10
Comments: Sure was nice to think that I might be able to have a normal life...a career...a husband I loved...children... Looks like that's all just wishful thinking. Say you don't want to play the blame game all you want, but that's easy to say for you folks who have already reached middle age and accomplished much of what you hoped you would in your lifetime (raising kids, career goals, etc.). I (a 21-year-old woman) will likely never have kids, because I don't want to bring them into this kind of a world. I will not be a psychological researcher like I had hoped. Instead, I'll be foraging for berries and raking a goddamned vegetable garden because for decades, all the plastic and all the gas just wasn't enough for this world's selfish f*cking population (apparently, myself included). Call me a bitter cynic if you want to, but frankly, I think I have every right in the world to feel the way that I do."

[rogerhb]

What is normal about living to seventy and never having known a day of hunger in your life in a species that has existed for four million years? The blip we have seen for the last couple of hundred years was not the normal part of human existance.

[RonMN]

Hey, atleast she's being both honest & realistic...which is more than i can say for 99% of the population. it's just her turn to rant (like we all have at one point or another).

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('RonMN', 'H')ey, atleast she's being both honest & realistic...which is more than i can say for 99% of the population. it's just her turn to rant (like we all have at one point or another).

[Chichis]

People believe these things because that's how it's actually been for the entirety of their parents' lives and some of their grandparents' lives. Why shouldn't we expect it to continue on, and why shouldn't we dissapointed when we learn it won't? I have often felt the same way as that women, perhaps it has something to do with the age. Let me tell you, when you see what your life could have been like, pursuing the things that interest you the most, finding love, having a family, living to a decent age while hopefully accomplishing your goals in life, and to find out it's not going to happen. That is reason for dissapointment. Nowhere in the article does she say she is entitled to anything. She does express her extreme dissapointment and frustration in having Peak Oil destroy all her hopes and dreams though.

You play it off as some delusional fantasy for people who hoped or expected life to be like it is now. People look at what has come before them, and listen to what people tell them, and for the most part there's no reason for them to not think things will be like they have been. If you dig deeper, like us here at Peak Oil, you find the reasons why it WILL change, but they aren't that readily apparent to the average person who is busy building their life according to the way they were told it should be.

There's really no difference between looking around you in say the 1700's and seeing that everyone is a farmer or whatever people in your area do and expecting to become a farmer, and living in the 2000's and looking around and seeing everyone are business people, information technology professional, lawyers, or mcdonald's workers, and expecting to spend your life doing one of those things.

The only difference here is that we have a slow burning event that pretty much gaurantees extreme changes in lifestyle that the small minority are able to pickup and forecast. This allows people to get a smug sense of satisfaction because they are able to learn that things will change beforehand, and they can sit and criticize the people that haven't found out yet.

[Ayoob]

I went through the same thing.

[PeakKYJelly]

Peak Oil is just a hoax.
Robots will do most of our work in a few decades, and then after that mankind shall achieve immortality.

Misanthropists will be sadly disappointed by the level of progress.

[Wildwell]

..Yeah, we were all suppose to be doing 1 day weeks now and enjoying a life of leisure...Funny how people are working harder than ever...

Depends on the personality, some people do feel very entitled to things even if they are not practical or possible and don't give a damn if others miss out. It's just a personality type.

[PeakKYJelly]

In the past 5 years, I've worked at a job where I only do about 4 hours of real work a day, the other 4 hours I look busy. My coworkers do even less work than that. It feels more like a party than a workplace. We're programmers. In a sense, those who only put in 2 hours of work a day ARE only working 1 day a week.

The only people who are working harder are the ones without any mental skills. Of course if you can only work with your hands, you need to have 4 or 5 jobs to keep up with the programmer, the engineer, the doctor, etc.

[Wildwell]

Programmers..says a lot...

Computer are toys, aids and always should be regarded as such. We don't want robots running the place or wiping our asses. Yeah we know some people get a lot of money for sitting around and doing, well, not very much, but isn't that the whole problem?

MOST people are working harder. The basics of life are now unaffordable for a great number of people, like housing, which is why you are getting so much 'live for the day' yob culture, crime and borrowing.

People that work in IT and Doctors from my experience work very hard.

[PeakKYJelly]

Toys? Sheesh. If someone writes a program that could do the work of 100 people, don't you think they should get paid the salary of those 100 people? Human labor should be replaced with robot labor, so that humans can spend time developing their minds. Mimicking our forefathers in mindless, brute manual labor is nothing to be desired.

[Wildwell]

I never said it was - some jobs should be replaced by IT - that's the aid bit. But the point is do we really want robots becoming more important than people and individuals getting up to no good with them?

BTW, I work in IT also, but regard computers as a useful machine with a downside as well as up. I see IT, like some other branches of science as a threat to civilisation at some point. A classic case of an invention that became out of control - rather like cars.

[PeakKYJelly]

Yes we do. There are limits to the current abilities of humans. We have to sleep 8 hours a night. Can only work effectively around 8 hours a day. When one human learns something, it cannot be transferred to another human; each human must replicate that learning themselves if they wish to learn the same subject. Robots will be able to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, ignoring downtime needed to repair them. When one robot learns a task, it will be instantaneously transmitted to all other robots with the same learning abilities as that robot. And the robots will think thousands of times faster than we are able to. Robots are the next step in evolution.

[Falconoffury]

In my observations in the USA, it seems like the easier the job the more the pay. The hardest workers get paid the least. I personally think it should be the direct opposite. I think the hardest workers should be the highest paid.

The people who deserve the money are the farmers, sewage cleaners, garbage collectors, grocery store employees, water treatment employees. I depend on these people for my life, and I honestly don't care how hard you have to think in order to work these jobs. I can live without programs on my computer. I can't live without drinking water, food, a working sewage system, and garbage collection.

In this country, we live in a society that doesn't appreciate the basic essentials of living. We don't mind spending big bucks for all the high tech gadgets and toys that we can live without, but for basic necessities, all we want is the lowest prices possible. The whole system of cultural values is messed up. We are so used to good food, fresh water, and the toilette always flushing, that we forget what life would be like without these things.

The dieoff will be rough for most of the United States. I don't know about the rest of you, but in my area, nobody knows how to survive in the wild at all. For the record, I'm a programmer.

[PeakKYJelly]

One of my former managers, whom I consider to be a typical brain-dead liberal, once told me "Is it fair that some guy who works out in the sun, digging ditches, should get paid the same salary as you, a guy who just sits at a keyboard, tapping away at a few keys?" I never responded to the dunce, since I was shocked that anyone could be as stupid as he was, but the response that came to mind was the following: I went to college for 4 years. Assuming a 25K a year salary back then, that's $100,000 I gave up by not having a job for those 4 years. If I had gone to a decent college, I would probably have had to pay 25K a year to attend. That's another $100,000. (In my case, I went on full scholarship, so it cost me nothing to attend college.) So that's $200,000 the typical college graduate gives up by getting his college degree. Should he expect to recoup his expenses by being paid more than some guy whose job is to dig ditches, who started at age 18 straight out of high school, and did not give up $200,000? Hell yes!

But brain-dead liberals don't seem to understand this. Who would bother to spend the years and money it takes to become a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or programmer, if they would be rewarded the same as a C student who just got out of high school, and can barely spell his name properly?

As far as manager's salaries being too high, I do agree with that. Managers should be paid more than the people under them, but not hundreds or thousands of times. And the managers who don't do anything all day long but just sit in their offices and look busy should get the boot.

[Raxozanne]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PeakKYJelly', '
')Robots will do most of our work in a few decades, and then after that mankind shall achieve immortality.

[Falconoffury]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')ut brain-dead liberals don't seem to understand this. Who would bother to spend the years and money it takes to become a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or programmer, if they would be rewarded the same as a C student who just got out of high school, and can barely spell his name properly?

[Wildwell]

Well put it like this guys, I've just lost the original message I typed, because the internet dropped out (as usual) couldn't get on these forums for a bit (like usual they had failed) and my mobile phone WAP email didn't work (as usual). I've taken advantage of technology all my life, had jobs using it. But I don't believe in Star Trek. From the simple point of view, most people can just about use the remote control and email at a stretch and the stuff doesn't work half the time. Remember the more complexity, the more chance of failure and we are the limit of technology as we have to use it, understand it and it has to be practical and safe. That's not to say that some Geek won't try and make himself a robot that can do the washing up with and he can have sex with.

[PeakKYJelly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n my opinion, money itself is the root of the problem.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PeakKYJelly', '.')

The only people who are working harder are the ones without any mental skills. Of course if you can only work with your hands, you need to have 4 or 5 jobs to keep up with the programmer, the engineer, the doctor, etc.