Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment

[WriterAtTheSea]

While this article had some interesting points, I found it rather difficult to swallow, especially without any reliable sources cited. I would imagine those exist, but they were not posted.

I also am uncertain what this really had to do with keeping within the Literary Forum, as this seemed rather science based.

[iloveamano]

This is dribble. Worse, it's infuriating dribble.

[Asa Adams]

[QUOTE=mono;220346]I, personally, found the article fascinating, despite my disagreement with a few parts of the article, which I thought, required immensely more empirical evidence to entirely prove all of the theories - theories, I call them, or hypotheses, because many concepts communicated appear far more reliant on non-linear logic more contingent on personal belief than, for example, a documented scientific journal or document.[QUOTE]

I agree. I think that this piece has a good, but entirely strange theory. As it is an opinion, I have accepted it as just that. I do believe that the majority of it is irrelevant, and mostly a bit of a bore, also to which I disagree with most of what was written, though it is very interesting. It is a good thesis to work with but very far fetched. I don't think it has any scientific merit, especially if you are to use its findings to end the use of "fast thought" and science for that matter.

[sushil_yadav]

I, personally, found the article fascinating, despite my disagreement with a few parts of the article, which I thought, required immensely more empirical evidence to entirely prove all of the theories - theories, I call them, or hypotheses, because many concepts communicated appear far more reliant on non-linear logic more contingent on personal belief than, for example, a documented scientific journal or document.
If possible, sushil_yadav, could you supply the works cited for finding this article? Without breaking the law for posting this article, possibly forgetting to cite your sources, it would also satisfy my curiosity regarding the reliability of the source - whether it seems more of faith-based scientological outlook (though I intend no offense to scientologists) or something more fact-based by scientific research, composed by doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, ecologists, and other relating researchers to the article's content.
Despite how much right-sided hemisphere brain-cognition and left-sided hemisphere brain cognition differ, however, I find that both can live in unison; I offer myself as a decent, though not the best example. For this purpose, I will expose my vulnerability to a public forum that I do suffer from mental illness (two, in fact); besides my incessant struggle, I find myself strongly attached to both science (particularly human biology, and remain a mere 2 weeks from graduating from nursing school), and attached to literature (also as a writer, writing notebooks full of poetry, and a third play in progress). I also admit the fact of my male gender; I find this relevant because females, on average, can have an average 48% larger corpus callosum (the connecting tissue between both hemispheres of the human brain, thereby increasing neural transmissions between the two).
Despite any such research that appears uncited and absent of any scientific relevance without a reliable source (perhaps in a bibliography), I find this article difficult to consider. I can admit that I agree with some parts of it, but disagree with others; of course, not calling myself an empiricist in all my thought, when speaking in more scientific matters, I find empiricism essential in providing any proof of the relevance of this article.

mono,

Thanks for reading the article and expressing your views on the topic.

The experiments I have proposed are primarily meant for those people who understand only the language of science. We don't need experiments to understand that our present lifestyle is destroying our Minds and Environment - the evidence is everywhere - left, right and center. The craze and fetish for science and scientific proof has mainly existed for the last 50 - 100 years. People have lived on this planet for thousands of years without needing scientific proof to understand something. It is Science and Technology that created the consumerist Industrial Society which has led to the destruction of Mind and Nature/ Environment. Who needs more science or more scientific proof. Science is not the solution - Science is the problem.

I have made some additions to the article "Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment". To read the modified article please follow any of these links :

freeinfosociety.com/wforum/viewtopic.php?t=3649
ephilosopher.com/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?127001.post
corrupt.org/transcendence/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1167537083
foreignpolicy.com/resources/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2485

sushil_yadav

[kilted exile]

Science is not the solution - Science is the problem.

Aside form the wonderful irony of decrying science via a medium that would not be possible without. I wonder exactly what you would have us do: Are we to become luddites and destroy every machine? Should we become like the Amish? Stop looking for advances in medicine? Stop looking for ways to make life easier?

Also without science how would we have ever known what effect we were having on the environment?

[sushil_yadav]

Aside form the wonderful irony of decrying science via a medium that would not be possible without. I wonder exactly what you would have us do: Are we to become luddites and destroy every machine? Should we become like the Amish? Stop looking for advances in medicine? Stop looking for ways to make life easier?

Also without science how would we have ever known what effect we were having on the environment?

Want to know what irony is?

The human race has been destroying/ killing animals, trees, air, water, land and people from the very beginning of civilization. Science and Technology has increased this destructive capacity millions of times.

Every man is a serial-killer. The per-capita destruction of Environment - per-capita destruction of Animals, Trees, Air, Water and Land is thousands of times greater than what it was 1000 years ago - 500 years ago - 200 years ago.

The Military-Industrial Complex is all set to destroy whatever life and environment that remains on earth.


There is a reason why the two World Wars happened in the recent past and not 1000 years ago?

It was not possible to have world wars 1000 years ago. World Wars became possible only when Science and Technology developed aeroplanes, ships and other carriers which could transport millions of troops and millions of tonnes of weapons[once again a creation of science and technology] from one corner of the globe to another.

And today one does'nt even need all these to fight a war. One just needs to move finger-tips to launch missiles that can destroy the planet several times over.

Right at this moment there are several countries fighting wars with one another. There is internal war going on in almost half of the the countries of the world. All these wars are being fuelled and sustained by billions of tonnes of weapons produced by the Military-Industrial Complex every year.

And it is going to get worse and worse every day.

If you kill one person they call it murder.
If you kill a few hundred they call it terrorism.
If you kill a few million they call it war.

Science and Technology has made this world [millions of times] more violent and unsafe than before.

Science and Technology has produced billions of tonnes of weapons and explosives - chemical, biological and nuclear weapons - millions of tonnes of Radioactive material [ which will soon be used to make dirty bombs - which are going to contaminate the environment for hundreds and thousands of years]. Science and Technology is the real terrorist.

sushil_yadav

[kilted exile]

Science & Technology has also saved many millions of lives. However, if you want to do away with every single technological advance and go back to living like it was in the dark ages by all means go ahead. You'll find however that there are still wars are many will still die (many of which in a far more gruesome way than now)

[cuppajoe_9]

Actually, the early hunter gatherer societies regularly caused other species to go extinct without the benefit of any technology more impressive than sharp rocks and sticks (unless you'd like to go without those as well?). Not to mention the evidence of violent clan-rivalries that cut the human population of the planet in half, possibly more than once.

The First and Second World Wars were emphatically not the first and second times there was a world war. To claim so is to forget the campaigns of Alexander the Great, the Roman conquests, Atilla the Hun, centuries' worth of carnage following the Protestant Reformation, the squabbling of the imperial powers – notably Britain and France – that divided the globe into European protecorates, Napoleon Bonaparte's rule and probably a few other events that I'm forgetting about. In fact: it's been three of four years since two sovereign governments have been openly at war with each other. I believe that is a record.

The world isn't becoming more violent, it's just that the violence that there is gets more coverage.

[Derringer]

Art is not a science. Emotion can not be empirically measured. I'm sorry to break it to you, but living a long time ago likely was much more difficult than living now.

[billyjack]

article continued.

1)Material things don't bring peace and happiness. Today billions of people have got things which even Kings did not have in the past. Car, computer, television, fridge, telephone - no King ever had these things. But people are still restless and unhappy.

2)Consumerist-Lifestyle is just not sustainable. If we do not immediately return to living a very simple and frugal life then very soon there will be no human life on earth.

3)A thinking species destroys the planet

the article brought up some solid truths and some flabby pseudo truths.

1)this seems right on to me. focusing our attention and sense of self on something as arbitrary as material possessions leads us through a merry-go-round of uquenchable desires. reason being, our desire is not thing desired, but the idea of the thing desired. then, once its gotten, our expectations (ideas) are most likely not met. this leaves us unsatisfied, wanting more, and thereby continuing the cycle of unquentiable desire. breaking the cycle would mean finding a way to be content with what one has. but our way of thinking makes this break seemingly unforseeable any time soon.

2) this claim is recockulous. it couldnt happen. asking us to "digress" to lifetstyles of 1,000 of years ago just wont ever work in a world. appealing to this "digression" as the answer to our contemporary problems is like demanding the industrial revolution to have taken place in five years. revolutions such as the industrial one take hundreds of years. re-discovering equilibrium with nature will take just as long, maybe longer since finding "the way" of nature involves a radically new view of man and his relation to the world.

3) this claim is cruddy because you cant put the blame on thought (language and symbolizing) alone. rather, our line of thought has gone astray-mistaking abstractions as more concrete than physcial reality itself. Feelings and thought were and are effective tools for living.

[Morrisonhotel]

I would go through that article and destroy some of the worst parts of the arguments presented. I can't be bothered, though.

I'll leave you with a reccommendation for reading: Dick Taverne's The March of Unreason - it destroys and ridicules huge sections of that article.

Guess what, bud? You say you're from India - India has benefitted more than most countries from science and technology (G.M. crops, etc. - not to mention the massive population which is sustained by technological advancement).

Also, just one point: sustainability and development are not contradictory. Who ever heard of such clap-trap?

[Argyroneta]

Emotions are not gaps in between moments of thought; they are the very nature of thought. The mechanics of society may be faster than it was in the past but to say that that comes at the expense of emotion is ridiculous. Emotion arises from stimuli and will always be irrespective of the speed at which the brain registers them!

[sushil_yadav]

Man can repair and restore things that have been made by man himself. Car, Computer, Aeroplane, Rocket - if anything goes wrong with these things man can repair and restore.

Man cannot repair and restore Nature/ Environment - because man did not make Nature/ Environment. Once a Forest is destroyed - it is gone for millions of years. One cannot create a Forest in 5 or 50 years - it takes millions of years to make a forest - containing millions of species of animals, insects, birds, plants and trees. Man can create a plantation in 5 or 50 years - not a forest.

The only way to save Environment is by not destroying it - leave it alone - leave it undisturbed. If you destroy Environment you cannot repair and restore it.

sushil_yadav

[sushil_yadav]

Emotions are not gaps in between moments of thought; they are the very nature of thought. The mechanics of society may be faster than it was in the past but to say that that comes at the expense of emotion is ridiculous. Emotion arises from stimuli and will always be irrespective of the speed at which the brain registers them!

Thoughts and Emotions are interlinked - but different things - totally/ completly different.

Words can be spoken - words can be read - words can be heard.

Emotion is a subjective-experience. Other examples of subjective experience are taste, smell, touch, headache, stomach pain.

One can understand the difference this way :

When we eat an apple we can feel the taste of apple. Apple can give us the taste of apple - but apple is not taste.

If we pour apple juice into a glass - the glass will not feel the taste - it does not have the ability to feel taste.

If a person eats an apple he will feel the taste - because he has the ability to generate taste from apple.

Words/ Visuals can evoke, intensify and sustain emotions - but words/ visuals are not emotions.



In every field there is easy work/activity and difficult work/activity.

In mathematics there is easy mathematics and difficult mathematics. Everyone can add 2+4 within microseconds. A PhD level problem of mathematics would take hours [or more] to solve - and that too only by someone who has spent 20 - 25 years learning mathematics upto PhD level.

Same way in the field of emotions there are easy emotions and difficult emotions. Easy emotions are evoked within nanoseconds, microseconds and milliseconds - anger, lust, fear, pleasure, entertainment and excitement are some examples. These emotions are associated with fast breathing and heart-rate. These emotions don"t require gaps between thinking to evoke, intensify and sustain. These are the emotions that can be found everywhere in today's fast society.

Then there are difficult emotions - which require ability and years of effort to develop - emotions associated with pain, compassion and peaceful states of mind are some examples. These emotions are associated with slow breathing and heart-rate. These emotions require freezing of thought - freezing of visuals and words - huge amounts of gaps between thinking - to evoke, intensify and sustain.

Fast emotions =emotions associated with fast visuals/fast words/fast breathing/fast heart-rate.
Slow emotions=emotions associated with slow visuals/slow words/slow breathing/slow heart-rate.
Rate of thinking=number of visuals/words processed per minute.
Gaps between thinking =gaps between visuals/ words/ sentences.

sushil_yadav

[Mortis Anarchy]

This is dribble. Worse, it's infuriating dribble.

Here here!