Futures

polystyle

Well-known member
Like to thank again Matt and Mark, mods for Dissensus ... , really ...
After the arguing is done , disagreements stated , noted -
bottom line is we all want a better world to finish our lives in right ? .
Can guess this is esp. true if you have kid(s)

Obv there are alot of people in the UK and The US right pissed off & ready to be 'up in arms'
and perhaps an equal (or greater) number who have 'given up' /don't care /couldn't be bothered
(feel that too sometimes) .
Would be curious to focus on any similarities in thoughts & energies and not the differences which by now have been posted pretty well in some cases ...

Guess this post brought on by various ,
the mention of what was it ? 'Grups' and also Sex And The City (!) (ugh) over in the Burial
thread and the female - male discussion there as well .
Cross thoughts / cross threads

I mean , what kind of future do you want to make ?
or do you think it's all already cast and you are along for the ride , bad or worse ?

Basically an optimist , i see many possibilities in music , tech and arts but at the same time it appears the the Politi Corps world wide are moving /have moved to consolidate their positions as well.
I see this first hand daily here , am hearing about it in the UK and have felt it in Japan , rd about it as happening in China ...

How to see our way through this mess we are in and to the other side , really ...
What will be written about this period of the 21st C say, 50 years from now ?
 

polystyle

Well-known member
The happening world

Can guess that things (often) don't change until something bad happens ,
maybe it takes something really bad .
I just see pressures building up to tipping or maybe breaking points

The US has of course led the way in *ucking things up royally , really ramped it up in the last Bush 2 years, as discussed widely here @ Dissensus.
Some - or is it all Religions having the big hands in radicalizing everything & everybody they can.
Beyond right/left/Socialism/Communism/Lib/Repub/gay/straight
is every faction going to continue subdividing and making borders/insulating themselves or fighting inside and outside influences ? is it natural like a simple cell's wanting to live ?
What about teaming up and solving things together.

Here in US the immigration issue has very much blown up into national debate , going past the usual one liners and is now on the front burner , at least mind-space wise .
Some cross roads reached and the world had better figure it out, accomodate .

With most everybody looking for something the Bible and Koran are prolly more popular then ever.
What of this 'War of Civilizations' we kept hearing about ?
Obv Bush & Cheney feel it's better to pre -empt (kill/destroy'-grab) now then later , so what will it take ?
The thread on 'US to attack Iran by end of March' was not so off , so many signals were and still are being sent by both sides and after the BS build up to Iraq war 2 can anyone be blamed for not thinking it was literally days or weeks away ?
They beat those drums loud these days and besides the blitz of continuous ads and marketing ,
it just about dominates and is hard to turn off & tune out.

Recently saw Chinese video of thugs hired by either Gov or Real Estate Business (maybe both) ,
rampaging to beat citizens who didn't want to lose their land and homes to development with big sticks.
Old man being carried out of his own house by plainclothed police , the crane already there behind him waiting to get the guy out the way and crush his house .
North and South of Shanghai's old Bund district already being cleared for ... condos

Thread also in response to seeing last night's (Japanese) NHK show on the drying of Spain ,
CG imaging visualizing that by 2075 -2100 esp. the Eastern part of the country will be as dry as parts of Africa , a sub Sahara desert situation.
Meanwhile more Gobi desert dust blows across China yearly , they are planting trees on a huge level in attempt to make a sand break , a Great Wall of trees ?

In this week's TV Guide review of PBS's "Journey To The Planet Earth"
the example is given of the African herder who had killed two lions who had been killing the man's goats.
Explaining the actions to the show's producer the man said 'What do you want me to do?'
'Each goat represents education for my children.'

A growing appetite for meat in China leading to the burning of rain forests to create pasture land in S America.

Japan's PM Koizumi & crew seem to have gotten their economy 'going again' but the country has rather big and complex problems too.

In the "V for Vendetta" film a news VO mentions 'the second US civil war' , but after watching Russia struggle with it's former 'own' , I don't see why not China next to break apart.
"Life without the CCP?' anyone . Will the CCP just go one forever ?
(BTW are there any Dissentians actually living in China now ? , would like to hear from them because it seems to be changing by the minute )

Already given that AIDS deaths are still growing in some countries ,
when will there be the next epidemic /plague/phenomenon or accident ( natural or human made) that kills thousands , hundreds of thousands or millions .

Isn't it likely that the only way to get to a simpler , perhaps saner way of life as per what Corneilius & gek-opel get into discussing over in the Hummer music debate is for humanity (or a big enough part of it) to go through a scorched earth bomb out - climate change -man made disaster (say, as illustrated in Russell Hoban's "Riddley Walker") ?
I say 'perhaps' as one who used hoe and dig that family garden bk in the '70's and knows how hard it is and how long it takes almost every day effort !

Ok, got that out . Rant & rambling but I just can't see that we will ever get to some (romantic or whatever) 'simpler' until some large failure/'Babylon falls'

Not to negate all the positive efforts and energies out there but it's gotten quite unbalanced , hasn't it ?
Cheers all
 

bruno

est malade
sometimes like you i see only chaos and destruction. it happens to me when i see nature films, animals battling for life in the harshest environments and to know that we are destroying them for essentially no reason, that i feel an intense desire to see all human life on earth erradicated. but in truth i think everything is blown out of proportion, that i blow things out of proportion. i would even say that we live in the best of times, that the wealth of resources available to this amount of people is completely without precedent in history. and that the human rights violations and destruction of the environment are just human business-as-usual, and what we see today is really nothing and is just magnified and disseminated in a way that the bloodbaths and crimes of yesterday were not. i was reminded of this when posting in the liberal democracy thread, i remembered the mass disappearance of people, the slaughter and absolute disregard for man in the twentieth century that truly dwarfs anything happening today.

what we see today is just people seeking refuge in the comforts of religion, ideology and ethnic identity, etc. the whole edifice of rational thinking will go to hell, all knowledge accumulated will mean nothing, periodically. and you and i will participate in bringing down these things. as for the future, i suppose its just a matter of clutching onto what you hold dearly to make it through the worst, just as countless others have done since humanity and conflict exist.
 

polystyle

Well-known member
Well, not that all humans have got to go , but we seem to need reminding that we are animals too .
The chaos has become part of life , and maybe it's all the 'Con'struction going on that should be considered.
But yeah I hear you Bruno ...
During that last 'little Ice Age' some results were the Plague
(it gets cold humans and mice/rats stay inside in close proximity , not unlike the current bird flu)
and burning of people who were different as 'witches'

Prolly will end up being in between all overwrought extremes and we will muddle along as we have
with high points and lows
 

polystyle

Well-known member
Old futures roll

Part of what I was thinking about when starting the thread was some years bk (pre 9/11) US WIRED mag had these scenarios for the future , cooked up by ? Schwartz , this highly paid Corp. advisor who W Gibson, Sterling , B Eno and the Whole Earth old fam seemed to buy into.
Prolly some of you saw the article , cut together graphics montaging the 'main players' as S saw 'em.
'The Narco state' ' The so and so State' , they were so pat , airtight ,
all the right data compiled cooked up for the clients
or the writers above to glom onto for use as sound bytes , book plot bits ...
 

bruno

est malade
polystyle desu said:
Part of what I was thinking about when starting the thread was some years bk (pre 9/11) US WIRED mag had these scenarios for the future , cooked up by ? Schwartz , this highly paid Corp. advisor who W Gibson, Sterling , B Eno and the Whole Earth old fam seemed to buy into.
Prolly some of you saw the article , cut together graphics montaging the 'main players' as S saw 'em.
'The Narco state' ' The so and so State' , they were so pat , airtight ,
all the right data compiled cooked up for the clients
or the writers above to glom onto for use as sound bytes , book plot bits ...
it's a bit of a self-fulfilling thing, this futurising isn't it? these scenarios churned out by the bringers of future are incroporated into popular culture, absorbed by people, form the mute fabric with which new ideas, new perceptions are made. i was thinking of this the other day, that if i were to write a book calling for, say, a separate state for women in which all children are born through insemination, or a pedophile state, no matter how outlandish the idea eventually it would take root and be realised in some form or other. which would mean that anything is possible in morality, social ordering, etc. but returning to the perspective of wired you have a point, and i think there was an fertilisation of ideas from this avant garde you mention to the people now in power, at least in this fascination with technology. i remember a newt gingrich interview by esther dyson which was particularly nauseating, politics brushed aside she was delighted with his techno-literacy. so this love of apocalyptic scenarios, this obsession with control scenarios, technological control, was bound to find a manifestation in the real world, and there you have bush and co. fulfilling the prophecy. and everyone else is following suit.
 

polystyle

Well-known member
N American monsoon season

Possible changed futures >
Rding in the Times today about the ongoing N American Monsoon Experiment that began in 2004 and is set to run till '08 .
Tho' monsoons used to be mainly an Indian Ocean affair ,
the US is expecting monsoons to begin each July
and continue through Sept. in SW Arizona and NW Mexico.
 
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polystyle

Well-known member
Earthquake season too

All the recent earthquake activity in Asia / S Asia in the past 2 weeks ,
and now the Indonesian Mt. Merapi volcano erupting too
has me anticipating a near future 2 quake scenario -

A major one in Japan (although maybe not even the 'big one' Tokyo drills for)
and within 24 - 48 hours a major one on N American West Coast (between Vancouver & San F)

I think people , Nature shows and mews media usually portray a scenario / a show about one big event
but the world would be unprepared for the destruction of a 'double quake'

These times have me curious about 'How many natural or man made 'events' it will take to cause a country to fail ...'
 

polystyle

Well-known member
Your Daily Earthquake

And so
not exactly surprised to learn upon getting up this AM
that a 7.4 magnitude deep undersea quake has rocked the islands off New Zealand.
No damage or injuries reported- these deep ones are not about surface noise/damage ,
they are deep movements of the planet which is still ringing from the Christmas '04 S Asian quake.

This quake came hours before the first test by Pacific Rim countries of their earthquake tsunami warning system

'thoughts' / 'politics' / 'music' / 'what's happened to grime ?'
unseen flick / buckle of an undersea plate and BURIAL becomes the action word
'Shanty house' neighorhoods wiped off the plate , people you know on vacation , maybe relatives
hungry ghosts in the real world
Your Daily Earthquake
 

polystyle

Well-known member
Saturday's 6.3 Indo quake

Oh man
and so sadly
another big Asian quake this one under Indonesia ,
200,000 lost their homes , last number i see today is 5,698 known dead
Indo, Chinese and Japanese teams onsites

Unfortunately this one seems to have given Mt Meripai renewed energy to spew more hot ash and debris
This looks to be unfolding, shifting present well into futures
 

zhao

there are no accidents
Nuclear%20explosion.jpg


(not making any specific statements with this but just thought it was a fantastic photo)
 

D84

Well-known member
yeah well the earth is heating up in many ways...

re environmental degradation, I think the cause is the same as human degradation everywhere: capitalism, human greed and myopia...

going back to that revolution thread - i think this place is crying out for a change. The present system is totally unsustainable.

OK so they've evicted the old and the poor from Shanghai/ New Orleans. Fine but who's going to live there instead? How are they going to buy the property? Where's the money going to come from? Who or what else is there left to rob or defraud?

I'm not sure if a violent revolution is the answer - at least not until we have a plan of what to replace the present disaster. We don't want a "four legs good, two legs better" result.

How to make the plan?

Given the vast amount of database and networking technology available to humans today surely we could work something out... Perhaps setting up a database (or databases) of ideas and reports from people who've actually tried them (eg. how well do companies with no hierarchies work?) would be a good start.

Also if we're to get rid of kings and queens and the control virus (or whatever you want to call it) then a collaborative, co-operative project like this will be the best way to ensure that the new system doesn't become a vehicle for people's instincts for egotism and self-aggrandisement as it is now...

These are my preliminary thoughts, at any rate..
 

polystyle

Well-known member
I hear that D ,
thanks

We do need the change ,
our planet needs it,
Gov's worldwide out of touch .
The people who got moved out of their old family home in Shanghai because developers are in a face race with Beijing are angry , Beijingers having already lost quite a bit of their old homes/neighborhoods .
New Orleans not at all happy , just trying to get from day to day
Europe wondering , immigrants world wide heading to the cities.

Disasters man made and natural continually up the ante
and violence ,while rarely a 'thinking option' ,
bubbles up as 'survival'
when one feels like you are in a demonstration with
louder activists behind you , pushing you into hard unyielding police shields that are getting closer and closer.
I dunno if anyone here has been handled by the Police in a situation like this but things can get way out of hand in an instant.

I suspect that if the US Corporation got a new Pres that would be some help (one can dream )
but the level of human frustration and anger seems to point to some evolution - creative destruction event(s), perhaps an overwelming one , maybe country by country , is the nub i am thinking about here.
Electricity for part of a country out from sunflares or an EMPulse , a loose 'suitcase' nuke or sloppy dirty bomb , and/or more floods , earthquakes , people to a tipping point
 

zhao

there are no accidents
it would go a long way to caution and direct people in their use of the world, that they were better studied and knowing in the Creation of it. For how could they find the confidence to abuse it, while they should see the great creator stare them in the face, in all and every part thereof?

- William Penn - Some Fruits of Solitude 1693
 

polystyle

Well-known member
'Fruits of Solitude ' nice , reminds me of the most recent Friedrich N quote in that thread ...

Are you saying we should be looking to the skies to catch that face , Con ?
 

zhao

there are no accidents
I'm not saying that. William Penn said that. he was a quaker, one of the founding figures in America... and I believe the illustrious Penn family line traces all the way down to... Sean.
 

polystyle

Well-known member
S Iranian earthquake

Early today a sizable earthquake struck S Iran
Iran has been seismically active , with a big quake in 2003.
Not much damage reported but 1 unlucky young woman was killed

Are these quakes in S Asia and elsewhere growing in number
- towards something bigger - or is this active period the 'worst of it'
hard to say isn't it ...
 

polystyle

Well-known member
'colonizing space'

And now we have S Hawkings to remind that we really should ... get off the planet.
He feels that if humans can survive their wars and themselves , best thing to do to 'get into the future'
is to colonize space in that next 100 years .
Base on Moon , check out Mars

If one believed the plans from major Japanese construction Co's some years ago ,
there would be a near space Colony going up by now , ala Neuromancer's Freeside
but those plans seem long ago now , utopian even
 

polystyle

Well-known member
First day of summer and ...

Earthquake season and high tides here to stay .
Tomorrow's edition of Nature reports on new earthquake research that took in 20 years of data and
confirmed that the Southern end of San Andreas fault is well overdue for a major 7.6 - or larger quake anytime.
Tens of thousands killed and tens of billions in damages - do we even know what a billion is ?
Abstract numbers usually tossed to us by our leader of the f...... world.
This research looked particularly at the 100 mile dormant Southern section that runs from San Bernadino to near the Mexican border.
This area of the fault hasn't had a major rupture in 3 centuries ,
since a big one in 1690 when not so many lived there ...

Time to hit the beaches while you and your kids can .
New research indicates many US beaches will be underwater in between 20 -50 years if trends continue
 
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