[BlueGhost]

Peak oil, and our lack of preparation for it - are a symptom.
Just like the starving masses in the 3rd world are a symptom, the spread of controllable disease such as HIV, the continual 'improvements to standards of living' which do not in fact result in happier people.

All these are symptoms of our social mores, symptoms of our economic system, symptoms of our continued improvements in economic efficiency, symptoms of our ever growing population, symptoms of our ever growing greed.

Yet this is not the end of it,
Why does our economic system keep making the rich richer?
Why do people keep buying more junk?
Why do people want treatment of symptoms rather than focusing on the irradiation of diseases?

Simple, because people want it so. The majority of peoples actions cause this, 'the people' don't really want it any different. You can cry manipulation, vote rigging all you want but in a democratic nation the buck stops with the electorate.

And so the course of action is clear - we must persuade people different!
We should go forth and tell them 'Thou shalt not drive a great big dangerous gas guzzling monstrosity.'
We should go out there and persuade people to consume less, persuade them to vote in clever politicians who'll institute long term and daring plans to fix the world!
Except people have tried that, and while they make progress they've been trying for a long long time and the world doesn't seem much better to me.

So, I suggest a different stratagy. Use the commanding heights of social conditioning to change people to change the world.

Change the focus of the education system such that the people it produce are more likely to support a rational agenda and less likely to be mindless consumers.

Make all advertising other than factual informative advertising illegal.

[jaws]

Your solution to the general population having been brain-washed by the social engineers is to... become the social engineer?

How exactly do you plan on accomplishing this? Do you believe the current social engineers will go away without a fight?

[Free]

Every attempt to change the human being - through "brainwashing" or otherwise - is futile - at least if you don't have 10 000 years time or a very good DNS construction kit.

We have to live with the hardware. All the pack of desires, emotions, in short the whole ice age man won't go away. We can only change the software (Culture, religion, values) which is hugely limited, because the hardware architecture will always shine through.

However, what we can change rather easily is how all those human beings, all those hardwaremachines, interact, or have to interact. The net. The protocol. TCP/IP. Network architecture. The society. The system. The economy. Call however you want to call it. As long as you calculate with the hardware, it will work.

[Raxozanne]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Free', '
')We have to live live with the hardware. All the pack of desires, emotions, in short the whole ice age man won't go away. We can only change the software (Culture, religion, values) which is hugely limited, because the hardware architecture will always shine through.

[Doly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Free', 'W')e can only change the software (Culture, religion, values) which is hugely limited, because the hardware architecture will always shine through.

[Ludi]

It's very easy to confuse software with hardware and believe that aspects of our culture (such as greed and short-sightedness) are hardwired "human nature." But that fact that human societies have often gone against these supposed hardwired traits proves they are actually cultural. Examples in Jared Diamond's Collapse.

[Free]

Maybe I am too much influenced by Nietzsche (or his epigon Freud) to not scrutinize and question seemingly altruistic, atypical behavior or values.

Buddhist monks? Just remember that they get food for free in a society that respects them (not insinuating that this is consciously their objective in the first place...)

Even if values seemed to have turned upside down they have a remarkable tendency to swing back in reality.
Best example is the christian church. The meek will be the first, etc. From a humble slave religion into the most efficient world conquering powermachine within centuries.

Somebody does not procreate biologically? Well, maybe he has found a better way to procreate, with writing a book for example? (theory of the "memes")

Sublimation of crude desires and will to power!

Cherchez l'egoisme!

Just saying that if you try to create a "new human", a masterrace, a superman, or whatever, like so many movements before, you will be in for a huge disappointment.

[Raxozanne]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Free', '
')Just saying that if you try to create a "new human", a masterrace, a superman, or whatever, like so many movements before, you will be in for a huge disappointment.

[DefiledEngine]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')But that fact that human societies have often gone against these supposed hardwired traits proves they are actually cultural. Examples in Jared Diamond's Collapse.

[Free]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Raxozanne', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Free', '
')Just saying that if you try to create a "new human", a masterrace, a superman, or whatever, like so many movements before, you will be in for a huge disappointment.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DefiledEngine', '
')I have yet to see anything that stumps the selfish genes. Which were these societies? What were the conditions they lived in? Famine? Lack of resources? Did they live like present day western civilization?

[Ludi]

Bah, that was rude of me, I apologise. I'll give a short answer, not a specific one from Diamond's book.

Every culture which did not engage in conquest essentially existed in a sustainable manner, which meant not being greedy to acquire more and also meant having forethought, not being short-sighted. Many hunter-gatherer and horticultural societies fit this description. Nearly all warred with their neighbors over territorial boundaries, but most were not conquering, which means they inhabited a finite territory thus with finite resources. Of course under these conditions of finite resources they nearly inevitably endured starvation during difficult periods, this is a matter of the archeological record. However, these periods of starvation were of relatively short duration versus the famines experienced by agricultural peoples, and the HG/horticultural societies didn't die out during them, but continued, within the finite limits of their territories. We can see in the case of some very old cultures such as the australians, living in the same place for tens of thousands of years eventually caused degradation of the land (savannah turned to desert in some areas), it took them some ten times as long as it took civilized people to do the same amount of damage, and in the case of the US post colonization, it took us only a couple hundred years to eradicate most of the remaining megafuana and turn large tracts of land to desert. So even if these peoples didn't live in an entirely and infinitely sustainable manner, they certainly achieved something closer to sustanability than we seem to be achieving. Not because they were saints, certainly, but because they must by necessity observe the finite quality of their territory and live within those limits, for their own selfish preservation. So, no need to lose the "selfish gene."

[BlueGhost]

If you belive people are genetically incapable of handling long term problems then I suggest you focus on eugenics and/or instilling a benign dictator who is. I'm pretty sure humans are smart and plastic enough to cope.

I agree, it would be impossible to change the base human drives of:

Survival
Pleasure.
Procreation.

However, these drives are not incompatable with long term planning. There is no need to create a 'master race' of aulturistic humans. Selfish ones are quite sufficient. What we need is to educate people so that they persue different and more effective stratagies towards these goals.

Do we have a good chance of survival as a species on our current path? No.
Are rat race running consumers happy? No.
Is our current life style necessary to procreate? No.

I don't see genetics as a barrier to a sustainable society. I think the same as most other people on this board: We're on a bad path at the moment and sooner or later we will collapse. But if we could all change our behaviour there are ways in which our current problems could be sovled.

I differ in that I have no interest in just trying to save myself and let the world go to hell, and I don't think you can change the world by writing to your politician or telling the masses to change their behaviour.

We do not have the leverage or power to change the world now, but it takes less energy and less people will try to oppose you if you try and change the distant future.

Does the car firm marketing exec care if his market is destroyed in 20 years time?
No! use the current shortermist apathy to your advantage - make an education system which turns out people who'll not only be receptive to PO, they'll work it out for themselves.

The problem is while I'm pretty sure we need to change the education system in some way, I'm not totally sure how it should be changed. Or even what people who're produced by that system would look like.

So my question is: What would an education system look like to produce sustainable living citizens?

[BlueGhost]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Free', 'L')ike in the current system in the name of the "invisible hand" I think it is vital to always count on the egoism of the individuals. Only that the current system is forced to expand and grow in an unstable manner, and doesn't price ressources (the future) right. If we could manage to do that with some kind of "protocol" or "game rules" we would be set.

[TonyPrep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BlueGhost', 'I') agree, it would be impossible to change the base human drives of:

Survival
Pleasure.
Procreation.

[BlueGhost]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TonyPrep', 'T')here's really only one drive: procreation. Everything else really comes from that genetic drive, behaviours that improve procreation chances tend to spread through the population.

[DefiledEngine]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')I'm not going to recount Diamond's book, the damn book is already written, go read it!

[Ludi]

You might have noticed I apologised! Sheesh.

I'm not very interested in debate actually, so I don't really care if my "debate" tactics are poor.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DefiledEngine', '
')You claim that they went against hard-wired traits. Did they discover agriculture, technology, domestication etc. and then rejected them, despite that their lives might be easier?

[BlueGhost]

And then because they didn't grow their numbers of capability they were annihilated by an external and un-expected event.

There are several events we know could wipe humanity out, there are probably some we haven't imagined. The man made ones could be solved by regressing to a hunter-gatherer society, the external even ones would not.

So, At the risk of repeating myself:

Fixing peak oil will not fix the 'iceberg'.
We do not have the power to fix the systematic problems in a top down manner.
While peak oil will result in a forceful power down unless we change the survivers will be wiped out by an external event.
As such one method to try and fix these problems is to modify society and normal behaviour. Education systems seem like a good tool for doing this:

What sort of behaviour do education systems need to teach to produce societies capable of handling peak oil and the rest?

Monty I do feel abit miffed that you merged my thread on 'how education sysytems would need to be changed' into this dross.
Ah never mind, I guess if no one bites I'll start another one in the off topic board, I hope that won't be too disparate for you? (Yes the 1st post made sense here, but I put it in its own thread because I was hoping to develop a discusison.)

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BlueGhost', 'T')here are several events we know could wipe humanity out, there are probably some we haven't imagined. The man made ones could be solved by regressing to a hunter-gatherer society, the external even ones would not.