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Archduke Tips Archduke Tips is offline
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Old Dec 18th, 2005, 02:36 PM        The Intelligent Society
I submit this article to the boards to seek feedback and constructive criticism on my idea of the intelligent society and its benefits and pitfalls as well as on my proposed solutions.

I believe that what we are currently are living in can be referred to as the intelligent society. Recently, I spent some time thinking about what I value most and what society values. My reason for thinking about this was because I was attempting to determine what my end goals are and what society is trying to achieve.

As for myself, I believe in God. I think that I am an intelligent person, but at the same time I feel like I am ignorant. I can base so much of what happens in the world in science and mathematics. I can also model systems that represent just about any force of nature or man-made. However, I still can not answer two questions that I believe truly show my ignorance,
1.) Why did God create the universe?
2.) How did God create the universe?

Maybe one day Philosophy will answer the first question and Science will answer the second, but as it stands I can not find a satisfactory answer to either.

Now as society is concerned, what we stress above all things is intelligence. The key to this intelligence is the idea of education. However, I don't think education is making us smarter so much as it is pulling us further from the truth.

The end goal of all of this intelligence is to create the perfect world, which I will refer to as Eden. We are trying to create the perfect medicines to keep people alive and healthy for long periods of time, we try to create the perfect source of power that can sustain the machines that make our lives easier, and we try to make the perfect machines to run all of the tedious and undesirable aspects of our lives.

These things all can be done, and I believe that Eden can be created. However, I do not believe that mankind is fit to live in Eden at this time. Maybe through our intelligence we can reach harmony with the Earth, but the hearts of man are hardened and will not live in harmony with eachother. In a perfect place, man will still destroy eachother.

The problem is not greed, lust, laziness, or anything like that because all of those things can be overcome. The problem will come from an overcrowding effect. In a situation with only small tribes of people living on Earth it would seem like the resources were never-ending. In the modern world, we are reaching a point where we must face the fact that our resources are limited and must be divided over all humans. Eventually we will reach the point where each new human is a burden on all humans. I think this will result in the downfall of the intelligent society and the resurgence of the primitive society. Without any building blocks what is the point of having the knowledge to build? Ultimately, people will not be able to survive on their fair share and they will have to take from others who are not willing to give.

To sum everything up, I believe the benefits of intelligent society are few and only consider immediate effects. Obviously, it would be wonderful to live in Eden. We could reach the point where everyone lives long and enjoyable lives.

At the same time this is the pitfall of the intelligent society. We can not keep reproducing the way we do and living long lives without causing overcrowding which would lead to society's downfall.

Our intelligence essentially created this problem. It is through our intelligence that we have created the conditions so that we can live long and have high survival rates. However, we have always considered long life and high survival rates to be a good thing, and so have never considered the ill effects that they can create.

I have considered several solutions to this problem:
1.) Expand into outer space and take a rapid expansionist policy so that we can claim all the resources we need to keep growing.
2.) Create two types of people, those who can breed and those who can't. Both types would still be able to have sex, but essentially only certain people would be able to create babies.
3.) Attempt to create a more feasible birth/death ratio to prevent us from hitting the population plateau.
4.) Divine intervention

These methods all have their problems. Space expansion is currently not feasible on the scale we would need, creating breeders and non-breeders has many ethical hurdles to cross, and balancing the birth/death ratio is a barbaric idea which would take away much of the progress we have made. Divine intervention is always a possibility, but it is not within mankind's control.

Ultimately, I think we need to move from the intelligent society to something else. Why chain ourselves to this notion of Eden which will create our downfall through overcrowding? We don't need to be intelligent to enjoy our lives. We don't need to be educated. We have destroyed our predators and become the top species on Earth. We already have a wonderful world to live in. It is because we continue to try to "improve" it that we are using up all of our resources. It is hard to let go though. I feel like we are in a wagon driven by a stubborn horse that will soon run us off a cliff.
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Ivan Raged Ivan Raged is offline
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Old Dec 18th, 2005, 07:36 PM       
no youre gay
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Archduke Tips Archduke Tips is offline
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Old Dec 18th, 2005, 10:30 PM       
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Old Dec 19th, 2005, 10:10 AM       
You seem to hint at primitivism near the end of your rant. Nip that attitude right now before it can develop, as primitivists are NOT welcome on the internet.

Or you can get yourself a lobotomy and never show your stinkin face round here again. Your call.
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Old Dec 19th, 2005, 01:52 PM       
more like RousseauNWM am I right fellas ;(
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kahljorn kahljorn is offline
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Old Dec 19th, 2005, 02:19 PM       
"We are trying to create the perfect medicines to keep people alive and healthy for long periods of time, we try to create the perfect source of power that can sustain the machines that make our lives easier, and we try to make the perfect machines to run all of the tedious and undesirable aspects of our lives. "

We don't, those already in power do and I have a feeling they really don't give a fuck about health and your life being easier.

"We don't need to be intelligent to enjoy our lives. We don't need to be educated. We have destroyed our predators and become the top species on Earth. We already have a wonderful world to live in. It is because we continue to try to "improve" it that we are using up all of our resources"

What you were saying about small tribes and such is a possible speculated theory for many 'anarchists' and happy people. Rather than suggesting whatever it is you are suggesting, they instead suggest a merger of the old world with the new world. Solar power and hydro power, perhaps, to power small isolated farming communities. There's really no reason to do away with technology.
That's my personal goal regardless of what the rest of the world does.
Maybe when people who don't need to have babies stop having them we'll all be better off in life. I think I'll have two kids then adopt the rest, it doesn't make sense to add to overpopulation, unless you're poor and need more welfare money.

"resurgence of the primitive society."

When did it go away, honestly? What part of humanity at this point in life doesn't fall into a primitive category? War, territorialness? Reproduction, gathering/selfishness(becoming rich and fucking everyone else over), dominance, submissiveness.... humanity is still very primitive except in a material/technological way. Emotionally and spiritually the whole of humanity is pretty much the same, holds the same fundamentally bullshit values and congregates for the same bullshit 'ideals', if you could even call them that. In some senses we have even gone back-- but alot of that is just because I live in america.

"However, I don't think education is making us smarter so much as it is pulling us further from the truth. "

Education, by it's very nature, is a double edged sword. It's intent is to attempt to influence developing minds, essentially when they are at their weakest and most influential times. So if we educate them with stupidity and weakness, they are likely to be stupid and weak. Which is exactly what happened, and probably exactly what alot of people want to happen. In a sense, education has succeeded.
However, if used correctly education can be a wonderful tool to give someone a headstart in life and introduce them to the world, that's why I will probably opt to home-school my children, at least to some extent.

"In the modern world, we are reaching a point where we must face the fact that our resources are limited and must be divided over all humans."

Recycling and molecular engineering could potentially fix that.

"I think we need to move from the intelligent society to something else."

According to certain psychologists human beings have three states they can potentially go through. The first one is physical, animalistic. The second is intellectual. The third is emotional. Emotional is considered to be the "Highest" form. Since society is essentially a result of the human beings who make it up, voila, it could be said society goes through the same states. I'd say, in those terms, society is still in between physical and intellectual; only using intellectual pursuits to feed their material urges.
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Old Dec 19th, 2005, 03:19 PM       
Kahljorn,
You take a very interesting perspective that I did not see. I am curious what your background is?

I took a look at it from sort of a perspective that does not take into account the people in power nor the influence of money, just humanity as a whole.

I do believe the primitive society has gone away. We aren't having to fight eachother for dominance. While some people still have this mentality, overall we have a very structured society that focuses on a sense of equality and ethics. Ethics is essentially the aspect that takes us from primitives to intellectuals.

I did not intend to make a point that we should become the primitive society. I was trying to say that if we reach the top of the population plateau that will be essentially what happens as we start to decline down the other side. I was more trying to suggest that maybe we should look at the technologies we have developed and decide which ones are valuable and which are superfluous and kind of trim the fat.

I really like how you kind of give a twist on things and say the people who make the medicine really don't care about the common man... and I kind of think maybe you are right. However, I realize I am not really qualified to speak about that because, despite the fact that both of my parents were doctors, I have always resisted using medicine or going to the hospital and seem to have always recovered just fine. But I guess looking at it from a business standpoint, healthcare has been doing exceptionally well and maybe that sort of indicates that the ethics of care are fading away from healthcare.

I disagree with society being in-between a physical and intellectual state. Society is made up of many different people who may be in any of the three states. One aspect of society that I think shows the emotional state is religion. The intellectual state can be shown in our infrastructures and our tendency towards education and advancement. And obviously the physical side takes a part when you look at things like clubs and bars. Some people may be more inclined towards one thing or the other, but society as a whole is made up of all three aspects that you mentioned.

Also, I don't see how molecular engineering can fix the problem. While it can stretch our resources further, it seems to have many problems of its own. I'd be interested in hearing about your theory on how molecular engineering is the solution to limited resources.

Thankyou for your awesome reply.
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Old Dec 19th, 2005, 03:31 PM       
nanotechnological restructuring of waste compounds into inert or even useful compounds would be a technological step on par with the splitting of the atom.

and it would have equally disasterous consequences when some damn fool made a weapon of it.

entropy is easier than progress. utopic society is highly improbable. the end, if not near, is still inevitable.

do try to enjoy what you have, while you have it.
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Old Dec 19th, 2005, 07:37 PM       
"and it would have equally disasterous consequences when some damn fool made a weapon of it. "

Yea, somebody might make a time machine powered by bananas and rewrite the entire history of the world.

"I do believe the primitive society has gone away. We aren't having to fight eachother for dominance. While some people still have this mentality, overall we have a very structured society that focuses on a sense of equality and ethics. Ethics is essentially the aspect that takes us from primitives to intellectuals. "

Ethics is just an abuse of power as anything else. "According to my ethics, your ethics are unethical, now I will take over your country". Saddam, anyone? Religion is an extension of ethics, or vise versa, in many senses. Not that that has any relevance. Just commenting. An ethical battle may often be a battle of words but it gets results in one form or another, or a battle of religious fervor.
Remember highschool, or the bars? Dominance and submission are seen there by the common man, people arguing political points often are attempting to "Dominate" their opponent. Our election process is essentially a form of dominance. Everything has dominance and "Winning" in it. There's still plenty of wars, plenty of people mouthing off to eachother on message boards and plenty of politicians trying to fuck eachother over. All of it has to do with an internal dominance/submission battle.

"I disagree with society being in-between a physical and intellectual state. Society is made up of many different people who may be in any of the three states."

Right, society is made up of all these people. However, it mostly has an inclination towards material gain, often by means of intellectual pursuit or pursuit of an object derived from intellectual pursuit. On a whole, what is the greatest pursuit man has? Money and material possessions. That's a distinctly materialistic focus. If society goes through the same states, then each one should have an identifying marker of some kind (like the state of society) and I highly doubt the focus of emotional-being would have anything to do with someday owning a corvette. Also, often times the way to identify someone has to do with class; class has to do with money or material possessions. Now a days you also notice people judging people by intellectual means as well.
There are of course people outside the scope of what I'm saying, I'm just talking on a whole. The majority of the world.

How many third world countries are there with a rich upper class and a poor lower class? Exactly.
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