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Originally Posted by Zachstar
What? You think we are going to say "Screw it" to modern way of life? Who makes that decision?
One step at a time here... Lets fix the current crisis then work on getting offworld. The resources in space are great and the ability to use them grows. Hydroponics for instance can mean that people can live and work in space. And while I don't believe my generation will live in a giant space station. I do believe man will go to the stars before just saying we have grown enough. Can you imagine the wars if someone tried to tell another that we can't reasonably grow anymore?
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I must not say or imagine that: growth rates realises themselves. and actually, we already have wars over ressources. And plan for wars about things like sweet water. Western man lives excessively beyond what Earth support, and what can be replkaced in ressources, and what serves man well. the symptoms are many, from pollution over oceans empty of fish to individual and sociological neuroses. I do not say "stop teczhnological developement", so do not make it appear like that. I say that it will not save us if we fail to "modernize" our state of minds and our attitudes at the same time. We will not directly jump into a happy and bright new world. We and our chiuldren will need to pass through a phase of transition first, and nthat will be a time of deep crisis and bitter conflicts, like all times of major transormations are.
and it is not a given that we survive that: we may battle against each other until we have killed our selves, or we fall by being exposed to the long-lasting consequences that we already have triggered in the past and who have a self.-dynmaic that is beyond our immediate control. But nothing hinders us to try at least, so - let's become wiser AND technologically more competent as well. Both is needed, not just one. Engineering probölems are a reality. But so are problems of sociology. Religion. Environment. Zeitgeist. Tradition. City planning. Time windows widening or closing. For example what worth is it to have fantatsic tezhcnological possibilities, if the latest wave of relgious fundamentalism has turned into a flood meanwhile carrying the world away and forbidding technology as tool'S whose use is against the will of any god? What use is it if we could have fusion power in x year, when we do not have the breath to hold out that long to build the needed knowldge and industrial basis, or run out of energy meanwhile, or pollution kills us? When famlies in the present have no more the money to pay for heating in winter? and wosh - the wide field of complex economics enter the arena and share the same space with relgion and technology.
Yopu cannot afford to foc us on just one, and ignore the other factors.
Let'S fix the crisis and then go offworld, you simply said. Yeah - easy. Im free next saturday, then we can leave.
I have just a feeling that it will not run so smoothly.