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As I stated earlier this week in FOG (chat), the other day, I had an epiphany. I was just walking along on the way to the train station from work, mulling stupid thoughts around my head as usual. You know the sort of thing, I'm sure. Imagining I was inside Championship Manager, Managing Cardiff, with the amazing team I've build, carving my way to the title glory we so richly deserved. Imagining what I would do if I won the lottery over the weekend. That sort of stuff.
I don't know how it happened, all I did was look to my left, where there is a small patch of trees, greenery and a small stream, and then looked to my right, where there was a bustling road and houses. Suddenly a burst of thoughts passed through my head like a bolt of lightning, and for a brief moment, I looked at all of humankind in a light I haven't seen it in before. I won't pretend that it was any kind of religious experience. Quite the opposite. What I was left thinking leaves us further away from God than I've ever considered us to be.
The experience left me almost breathless. Indeed my step faltered, and a chill ran up my spine.
I can't explain the thought processes, and can only really touch on the many conclusions I reached in such a small space of time. But I'll try now and explain what it is I felt, what I experienced.
==========================================================
"Human beings are a disease, the cancer of this planet"
-Agent Smith, The Matrix
It's hard to know where to begin really. Humanity, society, all of it is quite complicated. What we consider ourselves to be, what we dictate we are capable of, how we decide to enforce it, how we choose to live. The number of decisions that power mankind is truly immense.
Everyone makes decisions, every one of over 6 billion human beings worldwide. These decisions are based on environments, but these environments are essentially influenced by other humans making their own decisions. Thinking on a large enough scale, you can consider mankind to be a collective being, thinking on a grand scale. Everyone's decisions and actions eventually effect everyone else's environments, and hence, their decisions.
To this extent at least, human beings can be said to be a hive species. We group together in large number, creating a "nest" of sorts, divide up the labour force to perform specific job roles, elect rulers to control our options etc.
Now, I'm going to make an assumption. When I say that, I mean that I'm going to go on and make points in reference to, and making use of my assumption. If you disagree with what is said later in this post purely because of the assumption that is made, please don't argue it. Argue based on what I put forward as my arguments.
The assumption I'm going to make is that evolution theory is true. Species evolve over time due to selective breeding or whatever, to adapt to their environments.
From an evolutionary perspective, humans are not only the most highly evolved species on the planet (in terms of societal structure and organisation), but we are also quite clearly on the top of the food chain. The latter as it happens, has led to the former. BY hunting not only for food, but for our competitiors, we have moved up the food ladder, and by eating rich meats regularly, we have enhanced our brain power to the point where we are today. All well and good. Mankind has benefitted from hunting.
It has to be said though, that mankinds success isn't owed only to it's intelligence, and hunting skills alone. What has made humans so successful, is an incredible case of ingrained paranoia. It's no secret that people are generally insecure. Afraid of world around them, and always looking to protect themselves from it. That makes sense. By protecting ourselves, we live longer. Mankind benefits from paranoia.
But paranoia is very dangerous. Anything can be seen as a threat, if looked at in the right light. Dogs that bite people who hit them, fish that eat humans, trees too close to your home. No-one particularly wants these things around them, because they don't fit with the desire to protect yourself. But we can't just move the things that threaten us away. They might come back! Better to have them destroyed.
That's pretty much the gist of the history of mankind. If it stands in your way - or it could conceivably do so - then get rid of it. Little more remains to stand in the way of humanity, except our own technological ignorance. We own this planet, and everything on it. Something we have declared to the natural world with a vengeance.
There's nothing left to fear, but yet we still destroy. We tear down forests, pollute rivers, hunt endangered species to the brink of extinction and beyond. Why do we do this? It's quite simple. Before we destroyed because we had something to be afraid of, now we destroy because there MIGHT be something left to be afraid of. We might be afraid of running out of resources, running out of room, running out of time. The powerful urge of paranoia that kept us alive is still within us. Still driving us.
One of our most distructive paranoid urges is the way we mark our territory. We twist it, shape it, cover it up with terrain we make ourselves until it's completely unrecognisable, and certainly not natural. Because of our paranoia, we tend to stick as closely to this territory as we can. Stick to the towns, the cities, the roads. Stay where you are safe.
In a way, the manner in which humans lay down their territory reminds me of StarCraft, of the Zerg. The Zerg lay down the "creep" before they will lay down any other buildings. It is the infrastructure of their societal manifestation, just as roads and railways and bridges are ours.
Towns, villages, cities appear around the world all the time. New settlements, tailor made cities, the lot. Existing settlements grow, naturally, all the time. It is concievable that one day the entire planet may be completely consumed by the creep, comparable perhaps to Star Wars' Coruscant. Slowly, year by year, we continue to take up more of the surface of the planet with the creep, due to our paranoia, our fear of being away from our protection. Concievably, the only way to be safe at all is to be able to be safe everywhere. The way mankind is moving, this is an eventual goal.
More than that, it is an eventual inevitability.
The problem with mankind is we have it easy. No natural predators combined with easy access to food means that we will always grow in number. To account for the paranoia of an ever increasing number of people means that eventually we will need all the room this planet has to give. However, this is where mankind dies very quickly. With all available space used up just to accomodate the paranoid masses, our easy access to food quickly dries up. Soon after so will anything we can leach from the oceans. So we turn on ourselves for food or we die hungry.
This is of course discounting the possibility of colonising other planets, but that's beside the point. We're destroying this planet to make sure there is nothing left to be afraid of, and once we're done, we will either destroy ourselves, or finad another planet to destroy to keep our paranoia in check.
That sort of puts down the foundation for thinking I guess, but only scratches the surface of my vision. I'll stop here, since this post is quite long, and I don't want it to become unreadable. I'll continue this sometime after people have had a chance to mull this over (so far nothing new I would expect), and I've had more time to extract meaning from my own conclusions.
But I hope you see the trend, I hope you understand that we as a race have to put away our fear if we are to survive in the long term. Society has to change, and drastically.
IB
I don't know how it happened, all I did was look to my left, where there is a small patch of trees, greenery and a small stream, and then looked to my right, where there was a bustling road and houses. Suddenly a burst of thoughts passed through my head like a bolt of lightning, and for a brief moment, I looked at all of humankind in a light I haven't seen it in before. I won't pretend that it was any kind of religious experience. Quite the opposite. What I was left thinking leaves us further away from God than I've ever considered us to be.
The experience left me almost breathless. Indeed my step faltered, and a chill ran up my spine.
I can't explain the thought processes, and can only really touch on the many conclusions I reached in such a small space of time. But I'll try now and explain what it is I felt, what I experienced.
==========================================================
"Human beings are a disease, the cancer of this planet"
-Agent Smith, The Matrix
It's hard to know where to begin really. Humanity, society, all of it is quite complicated. What we consider ourselves to be, what we dictate we are capable of, how we decide to enforce it, how we choose to live. The number of decisions that power mankind is truly immense.
Everyone makes decisions, every one of over 6 billion human beings worldwide. These decisions are based on environments, but these environments are essentially influenced by other humans making their own decisions. Thinking on a large enough scale, you can consider mankind to be a collective being, thinking on a grand scale. Everyone's decisions and actions eventually effect everyone else's environments, and hence, their decisions.
To this extent at least, human beings can be said to be a hive species. We group together in large number, creating a "nest" of sorts, divide up the labour force to perform specific job roles, elect rulers to control our options etc.
Now, I'm going to make an assumption. When I say that, I mean that I'm going to go on and make points in reference to, and making use of my assumption. If you disagree with what is said later in this post purely because of the assumption that is made, please don't argue it. Argue based on what I put forward as my arguments.
The assumption I'm going to make is that evolution theory is true. Species evolve over time due to selective breeding or whatever, to adapt to their environments.
From an evolutionary perspective, humans are not only the most highly evolved species on the planet (in terms of societal structure and organisation), but we are also quite clearly on the top of the food chain. The latter as it happens, has led to the former. BY hunting not only for food, but for our competitiors, we have moved up the food ladder, and by eating rich meats regularly, we have enhanced our brain power to the point where we are today. All well and good. Mankind has benefitted from hunting.
It has to be said though, that mankinds success isn't owed only to it's intelligence, and hunting skills alone. What has made humans so successful, is an incredible case of ingrained paranoia. It's no secret that people are generally insecure. Afraid of world around them, and always looking to protect themselves from it. That makes sense. By protecting ourselves, we live longer. Mankind benefits from paranoia.
But paranoia is very dangerous. Anything can be seen as a threat, if looked at in the right light. Dogs that bite people who hit them, fish that eat humans, trees too close to your home. No-one particularly wants these things around them, because they don't fit with the desire to protect yourself. But we can't just move the things that threaten us away. They might come back! Better to have them destroyed.
That's pretty much the gist of the history of mankind. If it stands in your way - or it could conceivably do so - then get rid of it. Little more remains to stand in the way of humanity, except our own technological ignorance. We own this planet, and everything on it. Something we have declared to the natural world with a vengeance.
There's nothing left to fear, but yet we still destroy. We tear down forests, pollute rivers, hunt endangered species to the brink of extinction and beyond. Why do we do this? It's quite simple. Before we destroyed because we had something to be afraid of, now we destroy because there MIGHT be something left to be afraid of. We might be afraid of running out of resources, running out of room, running out of time. The powerful urge of paranoia that kept us alive is still within us. Still driving us.
One of our most distructive paranoid urges is the way we mark our territory. We twist it, shape it, cover it up with terrain we make ourselves until it's completely unrecognisable, and certainly not natural. Because of our paranoia, we tend to stick as closely to this territory as we can. Stick to the towns, the cities, the roads. Stay where you are safe.
In a way, the manner in which humans lay down their territory reminds me of StarCraft, of the Zerg. The Zerg lay down the "creep" before they will lay down any other buildings. It is the infrastructure of their societal manifestation, just as roads and railways and bridges are ours.
Towns, villages, cities appear around the world all the time. New settlements, tailor made cities, the lot. Existing settlements grow, naturally, all the time. It is concievable that one day the entire planet may be completely consumed by the creep, comparable perhaps to Star Wars' Coruscant. Slowly, year by year, we continue to take up more of the surface of the planet with the creep, due to our paranoia, our fear of being away from our protection. Concievably, the only way to be safe at all is to be able to be safe everywhere. The way mankind is moving, this is an eventual goal.
More than that, it is an eventual inevitability.
The problem with mankind is we have it easy. No natural predators combined with easy access to food means that we will always grow in number. To account for the paranoia of an ever increasing number of people means that eventually we will need all the room this planet has to give. However, this is where mankind dies very quickly. With all available space used up just to accomodate the paranoid masses, our easy access to food quickly dries up. Soon after so will anything we can leach from the oceans. So we turn on ourselves for food or we die hungry.
This is of course discounting the possibility of colonising other planets, but that's beside the point. We're destroying this planet to make sure there is nothing left to be afraid of, and once we're done, we will either destroy ourselves, or finad another planet to destroy to keep our paranoia in check.
That sort of puts down the foundation for thinking I guess, but only scratches the surface of my vision. I'll stop here, since this post is quite long, and I don't want it to become unreadable. I'll continue this sometime after people have had a chance to mull this over (so far nothing new I would expect), and I've had more time to extract meaning from my own conclusions.
But I hope you see the trend, I hope you understand that we as a race have to put away our fear if we are to survive in the long term. Society has to change, and drastically.
IB
Page:
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As I stated earlier this week in FOG (chat), the other day, I had an epiphany. I was just walking along on the way to the train station from work, mulling stupid thoughts around my head as usual. You know the sort of thing, I'm sure. Imagining I was inside Championship Manager, Managing Cardiff, with the amazing team I've build, carving my way to the title glory we so richly deserved. Imagining what I would do if I won the lottery over the weekend. That sort of stuff.
I don't know how it happened, all I did was look to my left, where there is a small patch of trees, greenery and a small stream, and then looked to my right, where there was a bustling road and houses. Suddenly a burst of thoughts passed through my head like a bolt of lightning, and for a brief moment, I looked at all of humankind in a light I haven't seen it in before. I won't pretend that it was any kind of religious experience. Quite the opposite. What I was left thinking leaves us further away from God than I've ever considered us to be.
The experience left me almost breathless. Indeed my step faltered, and a chill ran up my spine.
I can't explain the thought processes, and can only really touch on the many conclusions I reached in such a small space of time. But I'll try now and explain what it is I felt, what I experienced.
==========================================================
"Human beings are a disease, the cancer of this planet"
-Agent Smith, The Matrix
It's hard to know where to begin really. Humanity, society, all of it is quite complicated. What we consider ourselves to be, what we dictate we are capable of, how we decide to enforce it, how we choose to live. The number of decisions that power mankind is truly immense.
Everyone makes decisions, every one of over 6 billion human beings worldwide. These decisions are based on environments, but these environments are essentially influenced by other humans making their own decisions. Thinking on a large enough scale, you can consider mankind to be a collective being, thinking on a grand scale. Everyone's decisions and actions eventually effect everyone else's environments, and hence, their decisions.
To this extent at least, human beings can be said to be a hive species. We group together in large number, creating a "nest" of sorts, divide up the labour force to perform specific job roles, elect rulers to control our options etc.
Now, I'm going to make an assumption. When I say that, I mean that I'm going to go on and make points in reference to, and making use of my assumption. If you disagree with what is said later in this post purely because of the assumption that is made, please don't argue it. Argue based on what I put forward as my arguments.
The assumption I'm going to make is that evolution theory is true. Species evolve over time due to selective breeding or whatever, to adapt to their environments.
From an evolutionary perspective, humans are not only the most highly evolved species on the planet (in terms of societal structure and organisation), but we are also quite clearly on the top of the food chain. The latter as it happens, has led to the former. BY hunting not only for food, but for our competitiors, we have moved up the food ladder, and by eating rich meats regularly, we have enhanced our brain power to the point where we are today. All well and good. Mankind has benefitted from hunting.
It has to be said though, that mankinds success isn't owed only to it's intelligence, and hunting skills alone. What has made humans so successful, is an incredible case of ingrained paranoia. It's no secret that people are generally insecure. Afraid of world around them, and always looking to protect themselves from it. That makes sense. By protecting ourselves, we live longer. Mankind benefits from paranoia.
But paranoia is very dangerous. Anything can be seen as a threat, if looked at in the right light. Dogs that bite people who hit them, fish that eat humans, trees too close to your home. No-one particularly wants these things around them, because they don't fit with the desire to protect yourself. But we can't just move the things that threaten us away. They might come back! Better to have them destroyed.
That's pretty much the gist of the history of mankind. If it stands in your way - or it could conceivably do so - then get rid of it. Little more remains to stand in the way of humanity, except our own technological ignorance. We own this planet, and everything on it. Something we have declared to the natural world with a vengeance.
There's nothing left to fear, but yet we still destroy. We tear down forests, pollute rivers, hunt endangered species to the brink of extinction and beyond. Why do we do this? It's quite simple. Before we destroyed because we had something to be afraid of, now we destroy because there MIGHT be something left to be afraid of. We might be afraid of running out of resources, running out of room, running out of time. The powerful urge of paranoia that kept us alive is still within us. Still driving us.
One of our most distructive paranoid urges is the way we mark our territory. We twist it, shape it, cover it up with terrain we make ourselves until it's completely unrecognisable, and certainly not natural. Because of our paranoia, we tend to stick as closely to this territory as we can. Stick to the towns, the cities, the roads. Stay where you are safe.
In a way, the manner in which humans lay down their territory reminds me of StarCraft, of the Zerg. The Zerg lay down the "creep" before they will lay down any other buildings. It is the infrastructure of their societal manifestation, just as roads and railways and bridges are ours.
Towns, villages, cities appear around the world all the time. New settlements, tailor made cities, the lot. Existing settlements grow, naturally, all the time. It is concievable that one day the entire planet may be completely consumed by the creep, comparable perhaps to Star Wars' Coruscant. Slowly, year by year, we continue to take up more of the surface of the planet with the creep, due to our paranoia, our fear of being away from our protection. Concievably, the only way to be safe at all is to be able to be safe everywhere. The way mankind is moving, this is an eventual goal.
More than that, it is an eventual inevitability.
The problem with mankind is we have it easy. No natural predators combined with easy access to food means that we will always grow in number. To account for the paranoia of an ever increasing number of people means that eventually we will need all the room this planet has to give. However, this is where mankind dies very quickly. With all available space used up just to accomodate the paranoid masses, our easy access to food quickly dries up. Soon after so will anything we can leach from the oceans. So we turn on ourselves for food or we die hungry.
This is of course discounting the possibility of colonising other planets, but that's beside the point. We're destroying this planet to make sure there is nothing left to be afraid of, and once we're done, we will either destroy ourselves, or finad another planet to destroy to keep our paranoia in check.
That sort of puts down the foundation for thinking I guess, but only scratches the surface of my vision. I'll stop here, since this post is quite long, and I don't want it to become unreadable. I'll continue this sometime after people have had a chance to mull this over (so far nothing new I would expect), and I've had more time to extract meaning from my own conclusions.
But I hope you see the trend, I hope you understand that we as a race have to put away our fear if we are to survive in the long term. Society has to change, and drastically.
IB
I don't know how it happened, all I did was look to my left, where there is a small patch of trees, greenery and a small stream, and then looked to my right, where there was a bustling road and houses. Suddenly a burst of thoughts passed through my head like a bolt of lightning, and for a brief moment, I looked at all of humankind in a light I haven't seen it in before. I won't pretend that it was any kind of religious experience. Quite the opposite. What I was left thinking leaves us further away from God than I've ever considered us to be.
The experience left me almost breathless. Indeed my step faltered, and a chill ran up my spine.
I can't explain the thought processes, and can only really touch on the many conclusions I reached in such a small space of time. But I'll try now and explain what it is I felt, what I experienced.
==========================================================
"Human beings are a disease, the cancer of this planet"
-Agent Smith, The Matrix
It's hard to know where to begin really. Humanity, society, all of it is quite complicated. What we consider ourselves to be, what we dictate we are capable of, how we decide to enforce it, how we choose to live. The number of decisions that power mankind is truly immense.
Everyone makes decisions, every one of over 6 billion human beings worldwide. These decisions are based on environments, but these environments are essentially influenced by other humans making their own decisions. Thinking on a large enough scale, you can consider mankind to be a collective being, thinking on a grand scale. Everyone's decisions and actions eventually effect everyone else's environments, and hence, their decisions.
To this extent at least, human beings can be said to be a hive species. We group together in large number, creating a "nest" of sorts, divide up the labour force to perform specific job roles, elect rulers to control our options etc.
Now, I'm going to make an assumption. When I say that, I mean that I'm going to go on and make points in reference to, and making use of my assumption. If you disagree with what is said later in this post purely because of the assumption that is made, please don't argue it. Argue based on what I put forward as my arguments.
The assumption I'm going to make is that evolution theory is true. Species evolve over time due to selective breeding or whatever, to adapt to their environments.
From an evolutionary perspective, humans are not only the most highly evolved species on the planet (in terms of societal structure and organisation), but we are also quite clearly on the top of the food chain. The latter as it happens, has led to the former. BY hunting not only for food, but for our competitiors, we have moved up the food ladder, and by eating rich meats regularly, we have enhanced our brain power to the point where we are today. All well and good. Mankind has benefitted from hunting.
It has to be said though, that mankinds success isn't owed only to it's intelligence, and hunting skills alone. What has made humans so successful, is an incredible case of ingrained paranoia. It's no secret that people are generally insecure. Afraid of world around them, and always looking to protect themselves from it. That makes sense. By protecting ourselves, we live longer. Mankind benefits from paranoia.
But paranoia is very dangerous. Anything can be seen as a threat, if looked at in the right light. Dogs that bite people who hit them, fish that eat humans, trees too close to your home. No-one particularly wants these things around them, because they don't fit with the desire to protect yourself. But we can't just move the things that threaten us away. They might come back! Better to have them destroyed.
That's pretty much the gist of the history of mankind. If it stands in your way - or it could conceivably do so - then get rid of it. Little more remains to stand in the way of humanity, except our own technological ignorance. We own this planet, and everything on it. Something we have declared to the natural world with a vengeance.
There's nothing left to fear, but yet we still destroy. We tear down forests, pollute rivers, hunt endangered species to the brink of extinction and beyond. Why do we do this? It's quite simple. Before we destroyed because we had something to be afraid of, now we destroy because there MIGHT be something left to be afraid of. We might be afraid of running out of resources, running out of room, running out of time. The powerful urge of paranoia that kept us alive is still within us. Still driving us.
One of our most distructive paranoid urges is the way we mark our territory. We twist it, shape it, cover it up with terrain we make ourselves until it's completely unrecognisable, and certainly not natural. Because of our paranoia, we tend to stick as closely to this territory as we can. Stick to the towns, the cities, the roads. Stay where you are safe.
In a way, the manner in which humans lay down their territory reminds me of StarCraft, of the Zerg. The Zerg lay down the "creep" before they will lay down any other buildings. It is the infrastructure of their societal manifestation, just as roads and railways and bridges are ours.
Towns, villages, cities appear around the world all the time. New settlements, tailor made cities, the lot. Existing settlements grow, naturally, all the time. It is concievable that one day the entire planet may be completely consumed by the creep, comparable perhaps to Star Wars' Coruscant. Slowly, year by year, we continue to take up more of the surface of the planet with the creep, due to our paranoia, our fear of being away from our protection. Concievably, the only way to be safe at all is to be able to be safe everywhere. The way mankind is moving, this is an eventual goal.
More than that, it is an eventual inevitability.
The problem with mankind is we have it easy. No natural predators combined with easy access to food means that we will always grow in number. To account for the paranoia of an ever increasing number of people means that eventually we will need all the room this planet has to give. However, this is where mankind dies very quickly. With all available space used up just to accomodate the paranoid masses, our easy access to food quickly dries up. Soon after so will anything we can leach from the oceans. So we turn on ourselves for food or we die hungry.
This is of course discounting the possibility of colonising other planets, but that's beside the point. We're destroying this planet to make sure there is nothing left to be afraid of, and once we're done, we will either destroy ourselves, or finad another planet to destroy to keep our paranoia in check.
That sort of puts down the foundation for thinking I guess, but only scratches the surface of my vision. I'll stop here, since this post is quite long, and I don't want it to become unreadable. I'll continue this sometime after people have had a chance to mull this over (so far nothing new I would expect), and I've had more time to extract meaning from my own conclusions.
But I hope you see the trend, I hope you understand that we as a race have to put away our fear if we are to survive in the long term. Society has to change, and drastically.
IB
Page: