Sorry Variform, but i gotta pull you up about a few things,Yes everybody on this planet does not exist on it on an equal footing,yes our use of technology seems to be overbalanced against the betterment of the self and the enrichment of all our beliefs and behaviours BUT to abandon all growth and progress is to deny all human race to destruction.
There are people living in the Amazon basin that have lives totally different from ours, that are doing just fine without plasma tv's and videocards.
There are some people who would dismiss that notion, saying they are unhappy. But they are not. The fact is, we don't need 99% of our technology to be happy and live worthy lives.
I am not against technology or growth, if growth is sustainable. So I am not against warp drive, but I just can't blind myself to the ethical issue that arises out of the rich west continuing its science into deep space while more than half of our brothers have barely discovered the vaccine against lepra.
And as we have plotted the human genome, some of us on Earth, this gorgeous world racing through space at a speed of 30.000 km an hour, drink agricultural pesticides to commit suicide in India because the genetic engineers at Monsanto force them to use seeds that fail to grow properly into the money crop they desperately need to survive, the same cotton a child laborer over yonder in the factor sows into clothes, then dies by the 1000 in a collapsing building.
we are very lucky to have survived at all for this long and we desperately need to develop space travel so the human race doesnt exist in just one place when the big asteroid comes or the supervolcano erupts.
I have that worry too. I have been aware of that possibility for a long time. I would not like to see our race wiped out. But I wonder what the fear is based on. Such cataclysms take away our videocards for sure. Now that would be nasty. So what I am saying is that we will lose our luxury life. How devastating it would be for that Indian farmer remains to be seen.
If we leave this word, we should all go. Just like in a Vietnam film I once saw the hero cries to the staggering men he just saved 'We ALL go!'
And I hope we will go well fed and clothed as more noble beings rather than divide ourselves into the haves and have nots.
Because as things are, who would board the rocket? Will it be a starving Indian or African? Or will it be some rich privileged people? Or will the UN decide who gets to escape a dying world?
And, contrary to what jabokai says, that this is off topic, I find it extremely relevant to ask ourselves these questions before the rocket is at the launchpad and ready to go. And then it will turn out there have been people conniving and bribing and lobbying under all sorts of tables to get a seat.
having a fairer,more harmonious and spiritually enlightened human race will not prevent these occurences from happening and they WILL happen and we as a race have to be prepared for that.
As you say, as a race. All of us, together. And not from a divided world where some drink poison to escape this hell and some drink champaign.
We owe it to the stars themselves to approach them with dignity. If we leave this world divided, we will divide each world we colonize and base it on bad ethics. Because every new world will have riches to exploit. 2 worlds, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64. All worlds will have resources and resources aplenty combined with bad ethics means locust behavior. As long as there are resources, we can cover up our bad ethics.
That is what the injected events in ED are about. We are told that in principle - and really think about it - you can starve a world by buying all food surpluses, or that you can make a 'killing' quite literally, to withhold medicines from a disease ridden planet.
This is within the range of possibilities. I dare ask you, what kind of universe would you like to live in?
That is why I said I will play this game, because the premise on which it is build is utterly unacceptable, unethical and impossible, and it is impossible because of the way we act on Earth. The same thing we transpose into the universe, capitalism, greed, open markets, conflicts, war are the things we have on Earth right now. And we find those thing fun to play... But it is the same deal that will crash our society back into the 1850's within 100 years.
Even now technology is halted. yesterday on the news here, the fact that China has 97% of the rare earths needed in touch screen products (but as well all cell phones and batteries we use) and that electric car manufacturer Tesla has had to decrease their production because there weren't enough of these batteries available.
Apparently there is a conference in The Netherlands about this right now. What should happen? Should the west wage war and force China to dig their country into an open mine pit so that we can use our fingers on a screen?
I do not want to bring that to the cosmos.
) then you should be held to a higher standard. I'm making no such claims - I do give regularly to a charity of my choice but I could do a lot more if I chose. And if I went around preaching about it then I definitely would feel that I should be doing more than the average person.
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