Half-Life Fallout: Zeitgeist: Moving Forward - Half-Life Fallout

Berrie, on 23 January 2011 - 05:13 PM, said:

It's not very benificial, but in principal it is? Hmm, in principal, but not in practice. Fail basically.

Berrie, on 23 January 2011 - 05:13 PM, said:

Every man and his dog think they know that people will always be selfish, that there will always be war and corruption. The argument put forth in these films, by experts in human behavior, or genetics, at the top of their field, is that these types of behavior are symptoms of the environment we are raised in. To say there will always this or that simply has no basis. Our behavior, our mental and physical state, is defined by the society we are raised into, and the dominant group dictates the most common point of view.

Berrie, on 23 January 2011 - 05:13 PM, said:

Slightly big and baseless claim there. When I buy a pack of 36 sausages for £3 and eat that twice a day with potato wedges because that's all I can afford... it has something to do with my primal hunter-gatherer instinct? Ok... I would rather cook myself a caeser salad or enchilladas, but chicken is expensive.

Berrie, on 23 January 2011 - 05:13 PM, said:

Recent studies show that our mental/emotional state has a much greater effect on our physiology and health than previously assumed.

suicide_mission, on 23 January 2011 - 10:21 PM, said:

Ohhh, all the debt turns into profit, that makes sense. I wonder who is going to magically turn America's monumental deficit into profit that will happily benifit everyone. Oh of course, the 'invisible hand' of the free market will set it right.

suicide_mission, on 23 January 2011 - 10:21 PM, said:

And so more debt is created, just so business can boom. Oh and the debt lenders increase interest so maintain the value of their debt! How convienient for them. Too bad for the people who have to give up their home or business (or country) because they can no longer pay the interest.

suicide_mission, on 23 January 2011 - 10:21 PM, said:

Until then? Ain't gonna happen mate. What are we going to kill every baby that exceeds our baby quota for the year? But I hear eugentics is the solution (just want to make this clear, it is NOT the solution). And I'm sorry to drop it to you my friend, but the rates of inflation have been getting steadily worse for the past century. There is no more room for growth (peak oil), the labour market is shrinking and the population is still rising exponentially.

suicide_mission, on 23 January 2011 - 10:21 PM, said:

Nice one. There is no -ism that has ever based its society on the carrying capacity of the earth, that aims to rid humanity of uneccessary labour and hardship and create abundance through technology.

Science has raised our stadard of living beyond the dreams of people alive 100 years ago, and it can only get better, as long as we stop doing everything for the sake of profit, and do it for the sake of humanity and the environment, recognising that we must maintain a symbiotic relationship with the earth in order to fulfill our potential as a species. This is not about politics, but about progress and the systematic elimination of all the wasteful and disruptive behaviors, not by force or any inhumane act, but by understanding their true cause using the scientific method, and adapting the environment so that these tendencies disappear.

Mowgli, on 24 January 2011 - 07:36 AM, said:

Let me rephrase that. Banking has brought many advantages and useful products, they have however (especially more recently) made faulty products.
Without banking there would be no loans and mortgages and no way of easily accessing your money while somewhere else. Many businesses were build with bank-loans. Investment products are good products if you don't add almost criminal insurance policies and trick people into buying them.
The main problem with banking is that the ethics are often a last consideration and personal profits are put before the customer service.

Quote

True to a point.
There are however a majority of people who from their position couldn't ever imagine what goes on in a very egotistical persons head (whether that is some burglar or a banker who tricks a customer into buying a faulty product), yet there are people who grew up in the same society who turned out differently. The factors you are hoping to influence are vast and often quite out of our control.
The only real solution I see is going back from the rampant individualism and return to more social control and that still doesn't rid us of all the persons looking mostly for personal gain.
The 'uncaring rich man' and the 'thief who steals without concern of the owner' have existed in society for a long long time, probably before money.

Quote

You fail to grasp my point. We like to eat fatty foods, because our physiology is hardwired to like it. We don't need to eat like we did when we were hunter-gatherers, but are still hardwired to prefer it. Many of our dietary and health problems come from this lack of adaptation. It's not an excuse for everything, but it is a factor in our health issues.
Your earlier point didn't really involve money. It was about stress being the biggest factor in our health.
But potato wedges are in general more expensive and less healthy than regular potatoes and eating a hot meal twice a day seems a bit wasteful when you're short on cash.

Quote

I hadn't taken the emotional distress of stress into account.
You are right about our emotional state having a great effect on our health, but the most problems are with already unhealthy people.

Good discussion going on here, thanks all.

I don't have time to reply at the moment because I'm revising for a maths exam which is tomorrow.

But here is the new film, just released today.
It deals with most of the things we're talking about here (2 hours 40 mins):


I've updated the first post.

Good stuff so far, guys.

So where do you factor, for example in America, 1% of the population (I don't remember the exact number) possessing the vast majority of the nations wealth? Do they deserve it? And is it true as, some Right wing leaning say, they create jobs with the money they get to withhold from the Government?

I've always been the most interested in the latter parts of the Zeitgeist movies. Some of my thoughts:

1. Scarcity is a big problem for the human race. Looking ahead into the far fetched fantasy-future, I can see humans learing how to harness the energy of the universe by colliding matter and anti-matter and creating a machine that can create any material by coordinating and manipulating the elementary particles. When every human have this machine, then scarcity is exterminated.

2. Companies need products that wear down in order to be successful. Apple is not one of the best companies only because their products are great, they are so incredibly successful because they always create new products and claim that they are "better" every time. This creates a false need for their products that "fanboys" react to. This is not necessarily a bad thing, if I ever create a company this is how it's going to be done. But for the human race... maybe not so good.

3. Technology isn't good enough to remove #1 and #2. Lightbulbs wear out or brake (even LED), and we haven't created a lamp that doesn't brake. This goes for most things in our world; everything can and will be destroyed eventually. The question is: Are products so poorly constructed because technology has still a long way to go - or are products so poorly constructed because it's the best way to make money?

4. Imagine if technology developed products that didn't brake or wear down? I bought Sennheiser CX400 headphones, they broke down and I had to buy new ones, Sennheiser made twice as much money because they made these headphones that sound GREAT but brake easily (and almost devilishly easily). But what if things didn't brake? What if things were (practically) unbrakeable? I'm not saying that you wouldn't buy new stuff (just look at the Apple fanboys) but you wouldn't HAVE to buy new stuff since nothing broke down.

5. Last but not least: I really like that cool guy Jacque Fresco... However, the Venus Project at the ending of the Zeitgeist movie makes it sound very easy and so rational and logical, and I do like their arguments, but they fail to see the complexity of the issue. You would rationally determine what it the best and what is the worst for the population - but what if people want their "bad" and "unrational" things? Smoking, drinking, drugs, guns, controlable cars, knives, sharp (design) objects, water... the list of things that COULD be "bad" goes on and on and on. My favourite thing in life could be the thing that kills me, but even if I knew that it WILL kill me, would I want to live a life without it? Still I like their idea and I would love to see something like The Venus Project in real life, even if it just was a small city... it would be EXTREMELY interesting to see how people reacted to the change, what they would do all day, how they would feel etc.

My 2 cents.

Sleeping Mind, on 26 January 2011 - 08:59 AM, said:

people often commit irrational behavior, we just have a poor capacity to make long term decisions.

EDIT: apparently peter does not want to share his movie

suicide_mission, on 26 January 2011 - 11:59 PM, said:

Official release

Just got back from london...

About the light bulbs... funny you mentioned that...

Guus345, on 25 January 2011 - 11:34 PM, said:

The job market creates more wealth from all the things you buy when you have money. Unemployment is only bad because it means less profit. Mechanization will eventually replace the workforce, sooner or later, what then?

Do people that trade on the stock market deserve all that money they earn? Compared to what other profession?

That was an interesting video (about the light-bulb) and that's really what I mean by having things that either brake down psysically, get upgraded in such a manner that people need to buy a new one or get so big changes that the old products aren't compatible with the new systems. But considering the light-bulb thing, what about today? LED-lamps can go for almost an decade before you need to replace them...

This is kind of related to the psychological effect of capitalism: I've heard a lot of people using this kind argumentation, it shows how deeply capitalism is programmed into them. "You can't complain, it's FREE!" It's a joke used in the movie Click (with Adam Sandler), when Adam Sandler's character first gets the remote (for free) the inventor says that he can return it if he doesn't want it or something like that, so Adam's character responds "Why would you return something that's for free? You could just throw it away!"

I've heard this argument being used when they had problems with YouTube, when having seen a pirated movie/game etc. It's like you should ignore everything that is free, like you can't complain or try to fix things that are free, like it doesn't have any value if it doesn't have a price... which to me is ignorant, shortsighted and at it's extreme even dangerous.