[duff_beer_dragon]

The ancient Greeks? They learned at Egypt ; Egyptian view of the universe and life in general is nothing like that at all.

I heard Decartes saw an Angel and some of his ideas came from that. Maybe it was the same Angel that saved Hitler in WW1 so he wasn't bombed. (apparently he got a warning in a dream)

We're in this current mess because about 100 years ago those 'in charge' chose fossil fuels instead of vegetable diesel for cars, and instead of blah blah the usual for electricity generation.

It's as simple as that. All that needed to be done was have the other fuels / methods of generating power as-availible ; now it is harder to do that because it is a case of replacing existing stuff. That doesn't mean it isn't possible. Needs work is all.

If it had been done right from then on, we'd have a permaculture garden type of scene going now, meaning this : if you plant such a garden, you need to give it about 10 years of work to get it up and running, thereafter it requires minimal input of work.

If we had used - example - renewables to be the electricty generating and delivery standard ( yeah I could mention Wardenclyff, just to say you don't need to accept that kind of wireless would work to accept that renewables would work ) then by now all we would need to work on as-regards the global power 'grid' (or however the delivery of the power would work) is maintenance of the existing structures in place.

See, if we'd done it that way, by now we could be concentrating on things like space travel - and it wouldn't be while most of the population are extremely poor and don't have standard of living anywhere near what it should be.

[MrGresham]

From high philosophy to low economics --

MonteQuest, gg3, MrBean, all -- it's great to have a thread that challenges my simple everyday thought processes. I try to reduce my cause-effect thinking to the shortest distance from here to there when I feel myself geting lost in "high concepts". I usually feel like I spent enough years thinking that way, and ended up mostly unemployed and misunderstood.

Even as an economist, the study of which is supposedly grounded upon people's everyday work activities, I can see how theorists can lose themselves in abstractions, so I try to cut through and simplify things and tie together the stuff most of us already know.

But that's not to say I don't love a good mental challenge in the morning (think I'll go brew a pot of coffee) and you guys are going to be some great companions in that regard. I really appreciate it.

What is also inspiring is your generosity in putting the effort into being here and speaking your thoughts. For me, this Election Year's theme is "The Quest for Intelligent Life on Earth" and I think I've just found some of it...

[bentstrider]

Yeah, mechanical world view, I get the point.
All I'm saying is this fool did everything in his power to convince everyone petroleum was the only way to go.
I f we started out with the aforementioned agriculturally based fuels, people would've had more jobs to go with.
With the advent of greenhouse technology, there would've been a steady supply of fuel to keep things going.
And another thing about the building of massive greenhouses, everything would've become more localized.
Meaning less commuting to other places for future generations.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('duff_beer_dragon', '
')We're in this current mess because about 100 years ago those 'in charge' chose fossil fuels instead of vegetable diesel for cars, and instead of blah blah the usual for electricity generation.

It's as simple as that. All that needed to be done was have the other fuels / methods of generating power as-availible ; now it is harder to do that because it is a case of replacing existing stuff. That doesn't mean it isn't possible. Needs work is all.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bentstrider', 'Y')eah, mechanical world view, I get the point.
All I'm saying is this fool did everything in his power to convince everyone petroleum was the only way to go.
I f we started out with the aforementioned agriculturally based fuels, people would've had more jobs to go with.
With the advent of greenhouse technology, there would've been a steady supply of fuel to keep things going.
And another thing about the building of massive greenhouses, everything would've become more localized.
Meaning less commuting to other places for future generations.

[MonteQuest]

[quote="MrBean

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hat is the intended audience? You have a lot of preacher in you, which I think is an admirable trait, but sometimes that gets in the way of dialogue. We all share the conviction in the extremely important broad imperative you mention, and the "esoteric prose" is not intended to question the validity of that generalisation, certainly not to suggest a free lunch.

[MrBean]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bentstrider', 'Y')eah, mechanical world view, I get the point.
All I'm saying is this fool did everything in his power to convince everyone petroleum was the only way to go.
I f we started out with the aforementioned agriculturally based fuels, people would've had more jobs to go with.
With the advent of greenhouse technology, there would've been a steady supply of fuel to keep things going.
And another thing about the building of massive greenhouses, everything would've become more localized.
Meaning less commuting to other places for future generations.

[MrBean]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '
')Well, I cannot argue with that, but I think it is instructive to differentiate between an order of interconnectivity and an order of energy/matter and how it applies to our use of energy. Perhaps if we can get a handle on the latter, the former will be easy.

[MonteQuest]

quote="MrBean
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') don't equal use of technology with mechanical world view, the question is rather what kind of technology we use and how, to what end. Mechanical world view to my means above all that we stay unconsciouss and slaves to those mechanical processes of our minds and our cultures that make us act in destructive ways, instead of acting creatively and in harmony with our surroundings.

So I don't share your pessimism about all technology; we are a tool using species, that we can't change. What we need is more wisdom to reign the potential destructivity of our enormous manipulative skill and patience to think ahead further than just the next step before acting.

[MrBean]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 'q')uote="MrBean
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') don't equal use of technology with mechanical world view, the question is rather what kind of technology we use and how, to what end. Mechanical world view to my means above all that we stay unconsciouss and slaves to those mechanical processes of our minds and our cultures that make us act in destructive ways, instead of acting creatively and in harmony with our surroundings.

So I don't share your pessimism about all technology; we are a tool using species, that we can't change. What we need is more wisdom to reign the potential destructivity of our enormous manipulative skill and patience to think ahead further than just the next step before acting.

[bentstrider]

Well, I'm somewhat philosophically handicapped.
Only thing I can say now is this.
Due to all this mechanical view of technology as everyone talks about, yes.
We've literally screwed ourselves by encouraging more people to be born.
Letting people live longer.
Yet, in these Greek philosophy days, there weren't that many of us on the planet to begin with.
But all of you act as if technology should be abolished.
Its the source of all our problems.
Fine then.
You could all live wearing bearskins, I'll live as long as "I" have to on bio-fuels and blacksmithing my own engine/tranny parts.
And maybe find a way to blast off of this obviously doomed rock.
At least I'll be floating near Alpha Centaur when I long-dead.
The world will be roasted and toasted due to a cosmic cataclysm worse than an oil crash.
Due to the mentality of: "there's no more fossil fuels. lets all go live like cave whores."
All I'm saying is the optimism for any type of technological advancement sounds dead on this board.

[Falconoffury]

The challenge is developing a technology to direct flows of energy into usable forms.

Theoretically, we could maintain the same worldwide rate of electrical generation with a combination of wave/tidal and windmill generators. Technology could help us increase efficiency in those endeavors. Technology is not helping us when it's simply there to create more junk consumer goods such as ever faster processors and camera phones. Technology can help us harness new forms of energy such as cold fusion, He3 molecule fusion, or zero point energy. Technology can be good or bad, depending on how it's used, but it's still only one of many sciences. Science in general is not a way to define the limits of our world, it's a door to helping us understand our world better.

[bentstrider]

Well said Falcon.
As long as we got the lights and simple forms of mass communication.
As per your quote below, I'm afraid we could possibly start seeing things like Soylent Green and Logans Run in the near future.
Except combined in this sense.
You reach a certain age bracket, say 60-100.
It all works on a lottery system at this age, kind of like a draft.
When your number gets called off, your ass gets hauled off.
To where? The multiple materials processing center.
There, the selected old folks will be either made into food or a form of burnable fuel.
Sounds a little dehumanizing when you think about it.
But, with resources to humans ratio, I believe it could be the only way to keep numbers current.

[MonteQuest]

[quote="MrBean
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') don't think complexity is the issue. We are going in circles, I can only refer to Bohm's notion of entropy and scales of order and to Prigogine who showed that also 'order from chaos', and say that your notion of entropy is bit too simplistic and mechanistic.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bentstrider', '
')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')ue to all this mechanical view of technology as everyone talks about, yes.

[somethingtosay]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Falconoffury', 'T')he challenge is developing a technology to direct flows of energy into usable forms.

Theoretically, we could maintain the same worldwide rate of electrical generation with a combination of wave/tidal and windmill generators. Technology could help us increase efficiency in those endeavors. Technology is not helping us when it's simply there to create more junk consumer goods such as ever faster processors and camera phones. Technology can help us harness new forms of energy such as cold fusion, He3 molecule fusion, or zero point energy. Technology can be good or bad, depending on how it's used, but it's still only one of many sciences. Science in general is not a way to define the limits of our world, it's a door to helping us understand our world better.

[Fatherof4]

From my point of view it's really quite simple. The universe is always attempting to move toward a more disordered state. That is the natural order of things. In order to move from a less ordered state to a more ordered state (against the flow of nature) we must add energy to the system. It just so happens that in the last 150 years, we've managed to tap into a TREMENDOUS energy source, and we've applied that energy to our environment and produced a remarkably complex geopolitical/economic/industrial/agricultural/technological society.

However, in order to maintain this order and complexity, a continuous flow of cheap energy (actually an ever increasing amount due to energy loss as "waste") must continually be pumped into the system.

Without oil, we will not be able to fight entropy. Chaos will ensue until we reach some new state of equilibrium where we can meet our needs for order and complexity with the non-oil energy sources. To reach this new equilibrium, we will have to abandon the energy intensive activities which define our way of life and learn to be satisfied with lives that are governed by renewable energy resources. 7 billion people cannot survive on this planet under those conditions.

Analogy:
All day long my wife runs behind our four small children picking up after them just to maintain some semblance of order in the house. The other day, she wasn't feeling well and could not keep up. The house was a wreck when I returned home from work. (that was the oil shocks of the 70's). What we are about to experience is what happens when Mom goes away and check into a mental institution and kids have the run of the place indefinitely. This is actually more likely that I would like to admit around here.

[MonteQuest]

[quote="somethingtosay$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')Thanks MonteQuest I really enjoy your posts. You are very well written and studdied and have a clarity of thought.

I've been lurking here for a while now and have finally found a home where intelligent thought exists

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Fatherof4', 'A')nalogy:
All day long my wife runs behind our four small children picking up after them just to maintain some semblance of order in the house. The other day, she wasn't feeling well and could not keep up. The house was a wreck when I returned home from work. (that was the oil shocks of the 70's). What we are about to experience is what happens when Mom goes away and check into a mental institution and kids have the run of the place indefinitely. This is actually more likely that I would like to admit around here.

[MrBean]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '
')Of course complexity is the issue. The more complex a technology, the more energy transformations that take place. With each energy transformation, we have a loss of usable energy and an even greater increase in entropy. So, the goal is to use technology that will achieve the desired result with the least amount of energy transformations.