I'm not sure I want to see into anyone's mind, nor have them poking around in mine. There are plenty of people who are evil, disgusting or both. I don't think I need to wallow in whatever makes them what they are. It may be a 6 sigma problem, but 6 sigma happens.Originally Posted by Anc' Mariner
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
I'm not sure there is really a choice. Genome tech opens a window into man's biological nature and history. Surveillance tech opens a window into the mind.
Both are a done deal, at this point.
"There is is nothing hidden that will not be made manifest." As Yeshu ha-Notzri said. Or from the X-Files: "No More Secrets."
I suspect that this will be part of the shift to a neo-Luddite model in the next 2T. We have a private side and a public one. Most of us protect our private side. Though the Millies seem less interested in that than prior gens, I doubt that will hold for the long haul. We all need a sense of self, and that's hard when we are all part of the hive. Count on the neo-Prophets to make that more than plain. Then again, domination of the Millies by the ones wielding the power derived from universal knowledge and too much money could create a backlash even sooner.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
@ML, thanks to a basically unregulated Homeland Security apparatus and the Facebook revolution, the division between public and private no longer really exists. And nothing is hacker proof. Just reality. We basically live in Foucault's Panopticon, and that's a new permanent condition we will all get used to.
The Europeans are trying to litigate their way out of the Google database, but all the info giants have long been captured by govt apparatus, so any legal victories are an illusion. The brave new world is here, so Luddism is just a way for a country to stymie it's own development. Destined to fail.
That's the nature of an entropic universe. You can cut a cake, you can eat a cake, you can put a cake in a refrigerator or garbage can. But you can't un-invent the wheel, and you can't un-bake a cake.
Six Sigma Happens. Beautiful.
Or, from the movie, Sneakers.
Book, copyright 2010. Carthage Must Be Destroyed The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization by Richard Miles. The author discussed an obscure period before the Punic Wars, when the Phoenicians spread westward across the Meditterean. There were, oddly enough, some precedents of what would later appear during the Hellenistic Age.
"Politically, there was a growing sense of community, with elites enjoying some citizen rights in other western Phoenician cities. In Carthage, it appears that a minority of foreigners and freed slaves were also able to attain a status called 'Sidonian rights', which appears to have been a partial bestowal of some rights and privileges associated with Carthaginian citizenship."
Last edited by TimWalker; 10-21-2014 at 09:20 PM.
Miles discussed cultural hybridization during this era....
"Initially in diverse locations such as Spain, Sardinia and Sicily, these distinct micro-cultures were 'common mutally comprehensible' worlds inhabited by both Poenician/Punic settlers and native populations. Initiated through commercial exchange, these communalities were often built on misperceptions of each other's cultures....."
I was thinking about misperceptions of each other's cultures...could you cobble together a sort of culture through misunderstood cultural imports?
Last edited by TimWalker; 10-21-2014 at 09:31 PM.
I'm thinking that the next period will combine features of different historical periods. The "Tex-Mex" seems to be somewhat similar to what is described in a different thread, where the USA is being influenced by Hispanic culture. But the Boom Awakening was compared to a different era, the Hellenistic Age. There has been the suggestion that we are entering a new Middle Ages.
On the other hand, many details of everyday life are from the 20th century, and and don't have close historical analogs.
Last edited by TimWalker; 10-24-2014 at 02:54 AM.
We ARE in a neo-Hellenistic Age, but that covers 740 years or so, not just the 20 years of one turning (the "Boom Awakening" which actually was "The Consciousness Revolution.")
Some people say this neo-Hellenistic Age started in about 1650 (that's where I put it), or 1815 (the end of the Napoleonic Empire).
That is a great book! In one of the earliest chapters Miles mentions that the Tyrians and Israelites teamed up to open up trade on the Indian Ocean, something I never knew before! He also talks about how the founding of Carthage may have had something to do with the political fallout in Tyre from the Jezebel scandal.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
The world seems to be into a major demographic transition. Note-though radical life extension was mentioned, the demographic transition is occurring without it.
The Next America Boomers, Millenials, and the Looming Generational Showdown by Paul Taylor. Copyright 2014.
Chapter 12 Empty Cradle, Gray World. The author discusses the "demographic winter" of Japan, the nation probably the furthest along in its aging. However, much of the rest of the world is in similar transition.
"Japan's baby bust is the most acute in the world, but similar dynamics are taking hold on every continent. The demographic term of art is 'sub replacement-level fertility.' It first emerged in Scandinavia in the 1970s and is now common throughout Europe, Russia, East Asia, and some South American, Caribbean, and Middle Eastern countries. It's most prevalent in the wealthy countries of 'old Europe'-Germany, France, Italy, and Spain-as well as in the Asian Tigers of Japan's neighborhood: China, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. But this not neerly a phenomenon among the affluent . More than 20 Muslim countries have had fertility declines of at least 50% since the late 1970s, with the sharpest drops in Iran, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Bangladesh, Tunisia, and Libya. The typical Iranian Woman had nearly 7 children as recently as the late 1970s; now she has 1.9. Halfway around the world, Mexico has seen its fertility rates plunge by a similar order of magnitude over roughly the same time period. In fact, Mexican women now have a lower fertility rate than Mexican-American immigrants. According to UN projections, some 49 countries are now producing so few children that they will see their populations decline between now and 2050; about a third are 'developing' economies and two-thirds are more affluent economies."
Last edited by TimWalker; 11-08-2014 at 06:22 PM.
The Next America....
"All of this marks an unprecedented turning point in human history. Until a few centuries ago, the prevailing demographic paradigm consisted of high birthrates, high infant mortality, and relatively short life expectancy. In modern times, advances in sanitation, nutrition, medicine, and public health dramatically reduced infant mortality and increased longevity. This produced a huge demographic and economic dividend for the world, at least initially. More children surviving into adulthood meant more producers and consumers-more units of economic activity. Starting around 1900, the world's population expanded more rapidly than ever before, growing fourfold in the twentieth century alone, to about 7 billion today.
"...These compositional shifts in the global age pyramid are the result of what has been dubbed the 'second demographic transition.' The old paradigm of high birthrates, high infant mortality, and short life expectancy has been replaced by a new paradigm of low birthrates, low infant mortality, and long life expectancy.
Last edited by TimWalker; 11-08-2014 at 05:37 PM.
"When birthrates tumble, there's a short-term economic dividend for society. Children are expensive-not just for their parents but for the governments that underwrite the cost of their education and health care. Over time, however, the cost-benefit equation shifts. Small cohorts of children grow up to become small cohorts of workers-at which point there aren't enough of them to keep the economy humming. During the 20th and now 21st centuries, different countries around the world have experienced these phases at different times, but the sequence and trajectory are the same. And the pattern is now sufficiently universal that the world is on the cusp of a milestone that would have astonished...Malthus...the growth in the population of children is about to grind to a halt...In this same period, the global population of seniors (ages 65 and older) wil nearly triple as today's middle-age bulge matures.... ....Graying populations create financial stress
Last edited by TimWalker; 11-08-2014 at 06:00 PM.
Taylor discussed China's One-Child policy:
"....Now, roughly half a billion abortions and sterilizations later, it has become the target of bitter resentment throughout much of China....in part because it has created a generation of 'little emperors' who've grown up without brothers and sisters and whose children will grow up without cousins, aunts, uncles, nephews, or nieces."
Taylor quoted a paper by Chinese demographers: " '...One-Child Policy...creating a society with a seriously undermined family and kin structure....' "
The author also discussed the effects of graying on Japan's vitality-he indicated that they aren't encouraging.
Last edited by TimWalker; 11-08-2014 at 06:30 PM.
Theory regarding civilizations. Note discussion of interregnums.
Last edited by TimWalker; 11-09-2014 at 02:46 PM.
We are a universal state, a process in which world civilizations are merging into one.
It could be a bit like the dark ages, when swarms of barbarians succeeded the founding Western civilization. On the other hand, Rome itself was a universal state, as fully as could exist in those days. I have always identified our age as a new Rome on a global scale. But we can no longer identify with "western civilization," as if other peoples are somehow less civilized. That was never true, and now intelligent folks realize that it was never true. Our heritage now is as much oriental and tropical as it is western, and our lives are shaped by that entire heritage.
In both cases, our times and Roman times, the art and culture was inferior to the 500-year classic age that came before; more derivative, and more pedestrian. That latter trait has been exaggerated in our time. But there's so much vitality and variety in our overpopulated globalizing civilization, that some very good cultural things can still be found on the fringes of the mainstream. And we each have more opportunity to be creative and inspired than any people has ever had before. We have the entire culture of humanity past and present at our fingertips, and a greater easel than anyone that came before us.
After our age, starting just before the turn of the 25th century, there will not be another major separate earth civilization, but a period of dispersion; perhaps amongst the planets or the stars, or amongst spiritual planes. It depends on our development and what's out there. It could be like the dark ages, or it could be as my teacher named it: the age of light. A time of much enlightenment and wisdom, in spite of instability. Just as the monks kept civilization alive in the dark ages, in the age of light there will be plenty of inspirational sparks amongst a dispersal of fiery energy, change and mobility. Although the space age has begun in our age, it will be then that it more-fully develops, and when other worlds are settled or traded with and learned from.
If we can somehow transcend the prevalent scientific (i.e. Vandal-like) materialism and militarism that have been foisted upon us, and tame the greed of the elites spreading lies about freedom (e.g. David Koch), we can glimpse ever-more brightly in our global civilization our identity as the consciousness of planet Earth. And our exploitive, utilitarian conduct is requiring us to learn to love and care for our planet and its sustainability. Our age is when the consciousness, human energy and civilization of Earth is concentrating upon itself. That global, blue-green shining seed in space can then spread its offspring to other planets and worlds, and/or join with other worlds in a new federation. We'll be trekkies!
Book, copyright 2014. 1177 B.C. The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline. History of late Bronze Age, what some historians refer to as the "International Age". This was a cosmopolitan age of internationalism/globalization. The author comments that we moving into a similar age.
I literally just finished reading this book a couple days ago.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
Cline suggested entrainment of the different civilizations, with extensive international trade, diplomatic networks, etc., becoming at least partially interdepent.
For example, tin (alloyed with copper to make bronze) had to imported from Afghanistan. (Cyprus was a source of copper.) Actually, Bronze has been compared to our dependence on imported oil.
Cline also suggested that most of these civilizations were brought down by a "perfect storm"-drought, earthquakes, invasions. Egypt barely hung on, after repulsing the Sea Peoples.
Review of the book here.
Book, copyright 2012. The Revenge of Geography by Robert D. Kaplan.
Most of the book deals with geography and geopolitics.
However, Kaplan mentioned in passing the effects of the Information Revolution.
"…Assisting Turkey and Iran has been the revolution in global communications that, at least in their cases, allows people to rise above ethnicity and truly embrace religion as an identity group. Thus, Turks, Iranians, and Arabs are all Muslims, and all are united against Israel…."
Interesting, I might check it out. I know that certain civilizations fell during this period. But I figured that those not destroyed by natural events such as exploding islands, were replaced by those who adapted Iron Age weaponry.
Last edited by Time Mage X; 12-23-2015 at 12:51 AM.
Here comes the sun~Unfinished
Not exactly, says another Eric, according to the "greatest cycle." There's a similarity, although I doubt you can say that such an early age in history was very "international." But 1177 BC was toward the end of the 500-year cycle; a time when civilizations and empires were starting to decline and collapse. Egypt, the most dominant civilization of the era, in this case followed the cycle just about to the exact year (The New Kingdom, ca. 1550–1070 B.C.) If the cycle holds for us, we are still near the beginning of the cycle, contrary to the views of most cynical Gen Xers and their borderline generations here.
Just a reminder:
http://philosopherswheel.com/fortunes.htm
But it is often pointed out that our age is neo-hellenistic; that we are in the midst of an epoch like that from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC to the Fall of Rome in 410 AD. The equivalent period to our own is the 1st century AD (CE). The Hellenistic Age was the most international age until our own.
What was mainly happening in the years after the mid 1100s BC was increasing invasions (like the Dorians) and collapsing empires. It was the period soon after the Trojan War, and the period of the (probably mythical) exodus from Egypt under Ramses the Great. This was more like the time after Charlesmagne, when the Vikings, Magyars and Saracens invaded, and before the Ottonian Renaissance and the establishment of the first European dynasties that persisted almost 1000 years.
The next period was much like the medieval age of Europe, when great mythical odes and legends were developed and religion flourished amid relative political chaos. But the religious kingdom of Israel likely had its golden age in this next era, much like the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages. So where this age went, I would submit, is quite opposite to the direction we have been headed in in recent times.
Kaplan is criticized for his "environmental determinism" and for his excessive admiration for imperialism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Kaplan
