You could do, but by the sounds of it they're having to generate a massive magnetic field just to levitate something quite small, which means that you're requiring a large amount of energy to produce the field, and large amount of protection around anything that's magnetic sensitive (like magnetic media). If you're after artificial gravity there's much better ways of accomplishing this. Remember that when you're in orbit, you're not in zero-gravity (if there was zero gravity, the moon would shoot off) - you're in freefall, so the effect of gravity is hidden. You can reverse this effect on a smaller scale by designing a spinning spacecraft, as then everything inside it will stick to the edge (think of a clothes washing machine on a spin cycle).
But people won't get more power until they start using the powers they have got, such as using the power to not give money willingly to evil companies. Expecting the government to fix everything is just a cop out. You can't have a democracy AND a government that overrides the will of the people, so if the will of the people is to give money to evil companies, to stop that happening you either need to change who people want to give money to, or you have to change to a non-democratic government that stops the populace from giving money to who they want to. As that is the opposite direction of what you're trying to achieve (giving power to the people) you're only left with one option: changing who people want to give money to.
Magnetic fields don't induce a current, a changing field (or moving through a field) does... if the magnetic field is a fixed one (I assume so but could easily be wrong) the minor movements of it floating around I'd imagine is unlikely to do much in a way that would trigger currents through nerves. Electric currents tend not to discriminate much as far as nerve types go, so if it was doing something, it would be fairly visible as it would play havock with froggies muscles. For an example of what I mean, jump to 1:11 of this hehe
Well I'm in a similar boat so I can appreciate it, but no I wasn't meaning to work harder, just the positive thinking to help you spot potential ways out. Some chances come and go so quickly, you don't want to lose time on not recognising them, as if doing the same thing isn't working, you need to recognise chances that would allow you to do something else that would help you more. Easier said than done etc etc etc, I know, but it's a valid target I strive for myself, and it does make a difference... but yeah I know when there's an underlying medical thing that can pull the rug out underneith you at any time, it's hard to keep getting back up every time like nothing happened, but... what else can one do?
"How can I stop so many people from buying things from these corporations?"
As I said, you start with the most evil ones, favour better behaved companies, and make it a competative advantage to be one of the better behaved ones. It does work, but it is tough. In my country I've noticed that the unions can be quite good for it, for example our government is still pretty pro-Israeli because of Israeli government lobby groups that bribe them, fly them off to the "nice" spots in Israel and threat them to all sorts. But they are an evil apartheid state responsible for destabalising the whole world and manipulating the media to cover up their doings, and we must not support them. Several of our large unions all passed votes after the Gaza invasion that they would boycott Israel, pretty much like how we used a boycott against South Africa to put pressure on them to end their apartheid. This instantly brought in tens of millions of people into the boycott.
Unfortunately the American government undermine any action the rest of the world can do against Israel, they veto anything in the UN (there've been more vetos issues by America for Israel than all other vetos ever issued put together) and they continue to donate nearly $6Bln per year in arms to them, which means we have quite a bigger challenge than we did with South Africa. But I can't be responsible for the actions of anybody but myself, so I have to just make sure that I don't participate in the support of these murders, join the millions around the world who agree, and try convince other people to stop as well. It does work, I wish it happened more, but several large companies under pressure started setting standards of pay for their third world sweat shops or people picking fruits etc which has helped some of the most worse off people who need the help the most. So, you start from the bottom and work up.
So you think that people shouldn't say things that are obvious, and you came onto here and posted a message to whinge that somebody felt the need to say something that was "obvious", so obvious in fact that you felt the need to post a message saying so... and you call me a retard?
Or perhaps you're just lashing out because you have no personal/social skills.
But I didn't suggest changing one faulty system for another. I said learn what the good things are in other systems, and just import those. For example, up until... I can't remember beginning of this year or last, we here in the UK had our two main branches of government that you would recognise - our legislative branch also doubled up as the highest court of the land (ie, they were head of the judiciary also). We have now changed this and split that branch up so it's now more in line with what America has, ie, we now have a supreme court. We didn't need to throw away our entire system just to do that, did we? Well if we can get ideas and learn from other people, I'm sure America must be able to too.
Perhaps it's a little stubborn on both sides, no? If you know that your attitude towards them triggers the response of them digging their heals in (which you blatently do know, because it's a bit hard to miss that there are people like this!) and you do not adapt your interactions with them to try to avoid this from happening, then you're being just as stubborn as they are with the same results (their and your stubbornness results in them digging their heals in).
"I know that most people are like this, and that it's simply illogical"
It's not in the slightest... this just comes down to you not making enough attempt to understand things from others points of view (or you make the attempt but lack the experience to achieve the understanding). How do you expect to sell somebody on the idea that what you're proposing to them will result in them being treated better, if you won't even show them a basic level of respect (or you do but then drop it as soon as they challenge you or disagree with you on something)?
I know it's a pain having to bite your tongue for stupid/complacent people, but if you're not even willing to do that, can you really expect someone else to make the sacrifices that will affect their family for the same thing?
"protesting, for example, won't take up all or even a majority of their time"
Oh come on, being a complainy-pants won't achieve anything, because people protesting doesn't mean anything. Sorry, I know protesters hate to hear that, but let me give you an example as to why. In my country at the moment there are people protesting left right and center over public spending cuts. Problem is, the government was only voted in a few months back, and they were voted in saying "we're going to make massive cuts"!! Despite massive protests over the Iraq war, both Bush and Blair both got voted in again! Protests are just talk because they're not backed up by the actions that actually matter, like a change in how the majority votes, or boycotts.
And boycotts is the important one here. What people need to wake up to is that democracy doesn't start and stop at election times. Every pound, or dollar, is a vote, and it's up to you who you give it to. You buy cokacola, and you have blood on your hands, plain and simple. You can fill the streets with people protesting the arming of militias that kill union leaders in developing countries as part of the process of removing workers rights, but if those people then go quench their thirst by buying cans of cokacola... their protest said one thing, but their actions said another, which is "we support the murder of union workers so that we can have a cheap fizzy drink".
That's where real responsibility lies. So you're not asking families to take a day out here and there to protest something, not if you really want to make a difference. You have to get them to stop supporting evil - at least to the best of their abilities (as you can never be 100% sure about everything you buy) - at least enough for there to be an obvious competative advantage for companies to stop oppressing people because they know their profits will be slashed otherwise.
You can blame the government or expect the government to deal with these issues all you like, but if you're serious about actually working towards solving the problem, rather than just "feeling" like you're doing something about it, then you have to stop passing the buck to the guys at the top, and start looking at the people who're putting and holding them there.
"I wonder what would have happened if black people had this attitude during the civil rights movement?"
Well they had it a lot worse to be fair, it's far easier to fight against something when you have something in your face to fight against. The situation we have is far more subtle. Let me give you an example: the way my life is, at least currently, I do not encounter "freedom" issues, I have a health issue I'm currently battling which is the primary constraint on my life, it stops me running into some of the serious problems that do actually exist in our societies. The same is true, in different ways and in different degrees with a large portion of the populace: they are free to do everything they want to do, so they are not concerned about losing freedoms to do things they do not want to do or understand why someone else would want to do it. It's like, if there was a large wall built 2 miles away from your home, but you only ever travelled 1 mile away, why should you be concerned about the wall? It doesn't impede you. What is a concern though is you have to "put food on your family".
Of course, we know that even if we don't want to go beyond the wall, the fact that there is a wall being build sets a very dangerous precedent, and by the time the wall reaches us, we will no longer have the power to stop it, so we must stop it now. But that's a tough sell for people with families for example, because you're asking them to trade a potential future risk for a more definite risk now. Trying to utilise these people in a way that will achieve results could just be opening up a new front to fight on, so we're talking law of diminishing returns. What I do think though, is that if you want to be part of the battle for the next stage in our humanity, you not only have to have a very good understanding of that which we have to fight, but also an understanding of those who cannot or will not fight, partly because only with understanding will we move forwards, but also because you risk turning them away. Digging their heals in makes things even more difficult to move forwards than if they were to just go along with whatever. People will not willingly be "saved" by people who look down on them.
"if it violates the Constitution you have to get a bunch of politicians who [...]"
Well technically Americans (ie, not me) would have to do that as it's definitely not my place to, but stepping back from the finer details slightly, the contrast between America and my home Britain on constitutional issues is one I find quite interesting, because we take different approaches to it which both have their merits but also drawbacks. In Britain we take the view that we should not be ruled from the past, that no parliament can bind a future parliament. We cannot see the future, so how can we legislate over it? This has the advantage that we don't hit the problem you described, being "even if it's a good idea, if it's unconstitutional, good luck making it happen", because we can make changes easier. Of course, the flip side is that we are also able to throw away good ideas much easier too, where you're able to write them pretty much in stone, and require the extra steps of constitutional modifications to make the changes (so, for example, cracking down on free speech is difficult) we do not get that same protection (any government can screw things up for us). Most things in your constitution I think probably are things you want to hold onto, so this probably works out better for you most of the time.
Absolutely, feeling like you're doing something about the most important things is far more important than actually doing something about the things you can influence.
"Now is it ok to whine while at the same time doing everything to get into a better situation?"
It depends on what you mean by "okay". The problem is that the human mind is really good at finding things it's looking for, it will find the needle in a haystack if you're looking for the needle no problem. "Whining" is very negative, and partaking in the passtime has the side effect of adapting the brain to become "better" at it, create new inter-neuron links or strength existing links that lend to that negativity. The effect is the same as anything else you may entertain you mind with, you become better at finding it in the world. Now, obviously the brain doesn't only look for a single thing, so you are obviously able to find good things and bad things in the world (and by "things" I don't just mean physical, this extends to ideas) BUT the brain is confined by physics - it's not infinite, it can't be infinite, your skull makes sure of it. So the more time spent entertaining thoughts in a negative way is still time that could be spent entertaining thoughts in a positive/constructive way, meaning that those inter-neuron links would be created in a way that increases your chance of finding positive/constructive things to do (because the more the brain looks for something, the more likely it is to find it). So while it is "okay" to whine, it does have a detrimental effect in relative terms, because it's time that could be spent on gearing up the brain for spotting the ways out, which is why it's discouraged.
To be fair, the US seems to be having a hard time with passing bills that have long or short term effects! Every time I look at what Congress seems to be doing I end up wondering how there's even a country left! How it needs that many people to make doing nothing as slow as they've made it is beyond me!
Am completely with you on the China front. Human rights abuses aside (which our countries have more than our fair shares of - just that ours are primarily in countries other than our own) it's hard not to look at China's ability to actually do things without feeling mighty envious!
Yeah you're right, we shouldn't look at each other to see what others do better than we do, and merge the best bits from different people around the world in an attempt to make sure we at least do the best we can from the knowledge we have. "Keep doing the same thing" sounds much more hopeful.
"In order for such a thing to work I'd need to convince everyone else to not buy their products"
The correctness of other peoples actions is not a prerequisit for the correctness of one's own, thankfully you're only responsible for your own actions, and you do have the power to be part of it or not.
You say: "I'm well aware, but the ones who seem to do the most damage *are* the corrupt corporations and government"
and then
"If we're united. We're not"
But governments and corporations are people united... just... not in the way you and I might like! But most of the damage done there isn't done by stupidity or short sightedness, it's mostly a case of not valuing the lives of others, which don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that as a defense!! It's much much worse than being stupid. But even outside those closed circled, people are united behind what those corpuses do, I mean if we take the example of cokacola again (just because what they do is easy to quantify etc), everybody who gives them money is uniting with them to give them the power to kill people who try demand rights for workers to be paid a decent wage for making that drink. A term I like that describes the process (of in this case PR & marketing) is "manufacturing concent", the job is to mislead people to get them to unite and give their power to these companies in the form of currency. But manufactured concent is still concent, people do have the choice, and people do take that choice. You, personally, don't have the power to override all of them, because if you, like I, never buy cokacola ever again... we're still going to be outvoted by everyone who does. But that's democracy for you, you shouldn't confuse being out voted with not having a vote, no one in their right mind claims that democracy doesn't have any losers and that everybody wins.
I know, it does suck though that people are so cold hearted as to not be more careful about who they give their votes to. One place to watch with interest is the southern end of Latin America. Ignore local presses, because there's a lot of anti-them-lot propagander, because they ARE starting to unite, and look after their people. I've been learning a bit about the work of Hugo Chavez for example, and he's doing a lot of great things, despite being portrayed as a crazy dictator, he's not at all. He's stepped in to help Argentina and Bulivia get free of their shackles, just because he can, and whilst he criticizes the US government, he speaks very highly of the American people. Argentina has had a real hard time, but through that shines some signs of real hope, here's something I found quite inspiring: Argentina: Surviving without money
I guess greed is the thing that screws everything up. If we can find some way of cutting that out of peoples lives, we'd do just great! Still, lead by example, and even if you can't change the world, don't quit trying, and definitely don't join the other side, and try convince as many other people to do the same.
Your vote's aren't worthless, it's just that the things that you think are your votes aren't the actual things that are your votes. Your votes that give you the most power is your currency, where every pound, dollar, euro etc, is a vote, it conveys with it a small amount of accumulatable power, and you have a lot of choice over who you give those to. I know people like to pretend that they're helpless in this complex and unbalanced world, but that's mostly just a way of avoiding the idea of personal responsibility. For example, everytime somebody buys cokacola, they have blood on their hands. If people didn't give their votes to cokacola, they wouldn't have money to buy arms to slaughter union leaders in developing countries with it. Thing is, somebody can know that, and still continue to give them money, but it's not because they're stupid or short sighted, it's because they just don't care. Corruption isn't limited to governments and corporations. People can be corrupted just by a sugar/caffeine drink. We have a lot more power than people like to admit; if we didn't, there wouldn't be so much money in PR.
I think also that it's much easier to spot when things are done wrong than when things are done right, as things done wrong will (by definition) result in an unexpected and undesired event, whereas when things are done right (in the context of long term decisions) there isn't an event where you can come out and announce success, more it becomes part of the status quo. Probably also though many good forward-thinking decisions have become social-habits, in that individuals don't need to consider that, for example, learning to read and write, will be a good thing to do for their personal long term, because it has already been decided so now it's just a done thing (once again, part of the status quo).
Of coures we also have democracies that are limping along because when given the chance the masses will often vote for things like "let's spend less money on educating our children", but then complain 10-20 years later when there's an unskilled generation entering the workforce missing vital skills which negatively affects the economy. Well DUH!
I think people's sense of foresight goes down when their sense of entitlement goes up, and a sense of entitlement is one thing that, particulary in the west, we have waaaaaay too much of, to the detriment of our race as a whole:-/
It's only a centimeter if we're talking physical distance between the keys it takes to press each of the letters, so really, it depends on your metric.
Slashdot Mirror
The welfare budget is being cut. Not 100% obviously, that would be silly.
You could do, but by the sounds of it they're having to generate a massive magnetic field just to levitate something quite small, which means that you're requiring a large amount of energy to produce the field, and large amount of protection around anything that's magnetic sensitive (like magnetic media). If you're after artificial gravity there's much better ways of accomplishing this. Remember that when you're in orbit, you're not in zero-gravity (if there was zero gravity, the moon would shoot off) - you're in freefall, so the effect of gravity is hidden. You can reverse this effect on a smaller scale by designing a spinning spacecraft, as then everything inside it will stick to the edge (think of a clothes washing machine on a spin cycle).
I never made any such claim... but I can understand why you're so upset, it must be a very lonely life with your level of social skills.
But people won't get more power until they start using the powers they have got, such as using the power to not give money willingly to evil companies. Expecting the government to fix everything is just a cop out. You can't have a democracy AND a government that overrides the will of the people, so if the will of the people is to give money to evil companies, to stop that happening you either need to change who people want to give money to, or you have to change to a non-democratic government that stops the populace from giving money to who they want to. As that is the opposite direction of what you're trying to achieve (giving power to the people) you're only left with one option: changing who people want to give money to.
Magnetic fields don't induce a current, a changing field (or moving through a field) does... if the magnetic field is a fixed one (I assume so but could easily be wrong) the minor movements of it floating around I'd imagine is unlikely to do much in a way that would trigger currents through nerves. Electric currents tend not to discriminate much as far as nerve types go, so if it was doing something, it would be fairly visible as it would play havock with froggies muscles. For an example of what I mean, jump to 1:11 of this hehe
Well I'm in a similar boat so I can appreciate it, but no I wasn't meaning to work harder, just the positive thinking to help you spot potential ways out. Some chances come and go so quickly, you don't want to lose time on not recognising them, as if doing the same thing isn't working, you need to recognise chances that would allow you to do something else that would help you more. Easier said than done etc etc etc, I know, but it's a valid target I strive for myself, and it does make a difference... but yeah I know when there's an underlying medical thing that can pull the rug out underneith you at any time, it's hard to keep getting back up every time like nothing happened, but... what else can one do?
"How can I stop so many people from buying things from these corporations?"
As I said, you start with the most evil ones, favour better behaved companies, and make it a competative advantage to be one of the better behaved ones. It does work, but it is tough. In my country I've noticed that the unions can be quite good for it, for example our government is still pretty pro-Israeli because of Israeli government lobby groups that bribe them, fly them off to the "nice" spots in Israel and threat them to all sorts. But they are an evil apartheid state responsible for destabalising the whole world and manipulating the media to cover up their doings, and we must not support them. Several of our large unions all passed votes after the Gaza invasion that they would boycott Israel, pretty much like how we used a boycott against South Africa to put pressure on them to end their apartheid. This instantly brought in tens of millions of people into the boycott.
Unfortunately the American government undermine any action the rest of the world can do against Israel, they veto anything in the UN (there've been more vetos issues by America for Israel than all other vetos ever issued put together) and they continue to donate nearly $6Bln per year in arms to them, which means we have quite a bigger challenge than we did with South Africa. But I can't be responsible for the actions of anybody but myself, so I have to just make sure that I don't participate in the support of these murders, join the millions around the world who agree, and try convince other people to stop as well. It does work, I wish it happened more, but several large companies under pressure started setting standards of pay for their third world sweat shops or people picking fruits etc which has helped some of the most worse off people who need the help the most. So, you start from the bottom and work up.
So you think that people shouldn't say things that are obvious, and you came onto here and posted a message to whinge that somebody felt the need to say something that was "obvious", so obvious in fact that you felt the need to post a message saying so... and you call me a retard?
Or perhaps you're just lashing out because you have no personal/social skills.
I use the word "perhaps" loosely.
But I didn't suggest changing one faulty system for another. I said learn what the good things are in other systems, and just import those. For example, up until ... I can't remember beginning of this year or last, we here in the UK had our two main branches of government that you would recognise - our legislative branch also doubled up as the highest court of the land (ie, they were head of the judiciary also). We have now changed this and split that branch up so it's now more in line with what America has, ie, we now have a supreme court. We didn't need to throw away our entire system just to do that, did we? Well if we can get ideas and learn from other people, I'm sure America must be able to too.
"Yet another stubborn attitude"
Perhaps it's a little stubborn on both sides, no? If you know that your attitude towards them triggers the response of them digging their heals in (which you blatently do know, because it's a bit hard to miss that there are people like this!) and you do not adapt your interactions with them to try to avoid this from happening, then you're being just as stubborn as they are with the same results (their and your stubbornness results in them digging their heals in).
"I know that most people are like this, and that it's simply illogical"
It's not in the slightest... this just comes down to you not making enough attempt to understand things from others points of view (or you make the attempt but lack the experience to achieve the understanding). How do you expect to sell somebody on the idea that what you're proposing to them will result in them being treated better, if you won't even show them a basic level of respect (or you do but then drop it as soon as they challenge you or disagree with you on something)?
I know it's a pain having to bite your tongue for stupid/complacent people, but if you're not even willing to do that, can you really expect someone else to make the sacrifices that will affect their family for the same thing?
"protesting, for example, won't take up all or even a majority of their time"
Oh come on, being a complainy-pants won't achieve anything, because people protesting doesn't mean anything. Sorry, I know protesters hate to hear that, but let me give you an example as to why. In my country at the moment there are people protesting left right and center over public spending cuts. Problem is, the government was only voted in a few months back, and they were voted in saying "we're going to make massive cuts"!! Despite massive protests over the Iraq war, both Bush and Blair both got voted in again! Protests are just talk because they're not backed up by the actions that actually matter, like a change in how the majority votes, or boycotts.
And boycotts is the important one here. What people need to wake up to is that democracy doesn't start and stop at election times. Every pound, or dollar, is a vote, and it's up to you who you give it to. You buy cokacola, and you have blood on your hands, plain and simple. You can fill the streets with people protesting the arming of militias that kill union leaders in developing countries as part of the process of removing workers rights, but if those people then go quench their thirst by buying cans of cokacola... their protest said one thing, but their actions said another, which is "we support the murder of union workers so that we can have a cheap fizzy drink".
That's where real responsibility lies. So you're not asking families to take a day out here and there to protest something, not if you really want to make a difference. You have to get them to stop supporting evil - at least to the best of their abilities (as you can never be 100% sure about everything you buy) - at least enough for there to be an obvious competative advantage for companies to stop oppressing people because they know their profits will be slashed otherwise.
You can blame the government or expect the government to deal with these issues all you like, but if you're serious about actually working towards solving the problem, rather than just "feeling" like you're doing something about it, then you have to stop passing the buck to the guys at the top, and start looking at the people who're putting and holding them there.
"I wonder what would have happened if black people had this attitude during the civil rights movement?"
Well they had it a lot worse to be fair, it's far easier to fight against something when you have something in your face to fight against. The situation we have is far more subtle. Let me give you an example: the way my life is, at least currently, I do not encounter "freedom" issues, I have a health issue I'm currently battling which is the primary constraint on my life, it stops me running into some of the serious problems that do actually exist in our societies. The same is true, in different ways and in different degrees with a large portion of the populace: they are free to do everything they want to do, so they are not concerned about losing freedoms to do things they do not want to do or understand why someone else would want to do it. It's like, if there was a large wall built 2 miles away from your home, but you only ever travelled 1 mile away, why should you be concerned about the wall? It doesn't impede you. What is a concern though is you have to "put food on your family".
Of course, we know that even if we don't want to go beyond the wall, the fact that there is a wall being build sets a very dangerous precedent, and by the time the wall reaches us, we will no longer have the power to stop it, so we must stop it now. But that's a tough sell for people with families for example, because you're asking them to trade a potential future risk for a more definite risk now. Trying to utilise these people in a way that will achieve results could just be opening up a new front to fight on, so we're talking law of diminishing returns. What I do think though, is that if you want to be part of the battle for the next stage in our humanity, you not only have to have a very good understanding of that which we have to fight, but also an understanding of those who cannot or will not fight, partly because only with understanding will we move forwards, but also because you risk turning them away. Digging their heals in makes things even more difficult to move forwards than if they were to just go along with whatever. People will not willingly be "saved" by people who look down on them.
"if it violates the Constitution you have to get a bunch of politicians who [...]"
Well technically Americans (ie, not me) would have to do that as it's definitely not my place to, but stepping back from the finer details slightly, the contrast between America and my home Britain on constitutional issues is one I find quite interesting, because we take different approaches to it which both have their merits but also drawbacks. In Britain we take the view that we should not be ruled from the past, that no parliament can bind a future parliament. We cannot see the future, so how can we legislate over it? This has the advantage that we don't hit the problem you described, being "even if it's a good idea, if it's unconstitutional, good luck making it happen", because we can make changes easier. Of course, the flip side is that we are also able to throw away good ideas much easier too, where you're able to write them pretty much in stone, and require the extra steps of constitutional modifications to make the changes (so, for example, cracking down on free speech is difficult) we do not get that same protection (any government can screw things up for us). Most things in your constitution I think probably are things you want to hold onto, so this probably works out better for you most of the time.
Absolutely, feeling like you're doing something about the most important things is far more important than actually doing something about the things you can influence.
and you could probably make a job as a 'The Daily Show' researcher out of it :-)
"Now is it ok to whine while at the same time doing everything to get into a better situation?"
It depends on what you mean by "okay". The problem is that the human mind is really good at finding things it's looking for, it will find the needle in a haystack if you're looking for the needle no problem. "Whining" is very negative, and partaking in the passtime has the side effect of adapting the brain to become "better" at it, create new inter-neuron links or strength existing links that lend to that negativity. The effect is the same as anything else you may entertain you mind with, you become better at finding it in the world. Now, obviously the brain doesn't only look for a single thing, so you are obviously able to find good things and bad things in the world (and by "things" I don't just mean physical, this extends to ideas) BUT the brain is confined by physics - it's not infinite, it can't be infinite, your skull makes sure of it. So the more time spent entertaining thoughts in a negative way is still time that could be spent entertaining thoughts in a positive/constructive way, meaning that those inter-neuron links would be created in a way that increases your chance of finding positive/constructive things to do (because the more the brain looks for something, the more likely it is to find it). So while it is "okay" to whine, it does have a detrimental effect in relative terms, because it's time that could be spent on gearing up the brain for spotting the ways out, which is why it's discouraged.
"Something that the US has a hard time with"
To be fair, the US seems to be having a hard time with passing bills that have long or short term effects! Every time I look at what Congress seems to be doing I end up wondering how there's even a country left! How it needs that many people to make doing nothing as slow as they've made it is beyond me!
Am completely with you on the China front. Human rights abuses aside (which our countries have more than our fair shares of - just that ours are primarily in countries other than our own) it's hard not to look at China's ability to actually do things without feeling mighty envious!
What, like all the news outlets that refuse to report on it? You're suggesting we burn them ALL down? Hahaha.... am waaaaaaaaaaay ahead of you!
Yeah! Ditch you child, go to a rally!
Yeah you're right, we shouldn't look at each other to see what others do better than we do, and merge the best bits from different people around the world in an attempt to make sure we at least do the best we can from the knowledge we have. "Keep doing the same thing" sounds much more hopeful.
And you think that makes it untrue?
"In order for such a thing to work I'd need to convince everyone else to not buy their products"
The correctness of other peoples actions is not a prerequisit for the correctness of one's own, thankfully you're only responsible for your own actions, and you do have the power to be part of it or not.
You say:
"I'm well aware, but the ones who seem to do the most damage *are* the corrupt corporations and government"
and then
"If we're united. We're not"
But governments and corporations are people united... just... not in the way you and I might like! But most of the damage done there isn't done by stupidity or short sightedness, it's mostly a case of not valuing the lives of others, which don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that as a defense!! It's much much worse than being stupid. But even outside those closed circled, people are united behind what those corpuses do, I mean if we take the example of cokacola again (just because what they do is easy to quantify etc), everybody who gives them money is uniting with them to give them the power to kill people who try demand rights for workers to be paid a decent wage for making that drink. A term I like that describes the process (of in this case PR & marketing) is "manufacturing concent", the job is to mislead people to get them to unite and give their power to these companies in the form of currency. But manufactured concent is still concent, people do have the choice, and people do take that choice. You, personally, don't have the power to override all of them, because if you, like I, never buy cokacola ever again... we're still going to be outvoted by everyone who does. But that's democracy for you, you shouldn't confuse being out voted with not having a vote, no one in their right mind claims that democracy doesn't have any losers and that everybody wins.
I know, it does suck though that people are so cold hearted as to not be more careful about who they give their votes to. One place to watch with interest is the southern end of Latin America. Ignore local presses, because there's a lot of anti-them-lot propagander, because they ARE starting to unite, and look after their people. I've been learning a bit about the work of Hugo Chavez for example, and he's doing a lot of great things, despite being portrayed as a crazy dictator, he's not at all. He's stepped in to help Argentina and Bulivia get free of their shackles, just because he can, and whilst he criticizes the US government, he speaks very highly of the American people. Argentina has had a real hard time, but through that shines some signs of real hope, here's something I found quite inspiring:
Argentina: Surviving without money
I guess greed is the thing that screws everything up. If we can find some way of cutting that out of peoples lives, we'd do just great! Still, lead by example, and even if you can't change the world, don't quit trying, and definitely don't join the other side, and try convince as many other people to do the same.
Your vote's aren't worthless, it's just that the things that you think are your votes aren't the actual things that are your votes. Your votes that give you the most power is your currency, where every pound, dollar, euro etc, is a vote, it conveys with it a small amount of accumulatable power, and you have a lot of choice over who you give those to. I know people like to pretend that they're helpless in this complex and unbalanced world, but that's mostly just a way of avoiding the idea of personal responsibility. For example, everytime somebody buys cokacola, they have blood on their hands. If people didn't give their votes to cokacola, they wouldn't have money to buy arms to slaughter union leaders in developing countries with it. Thing is, somebody can know that, and still continue to give them money, but it's not because they're stupid or short sighted, it's because they just don't care. Corruption isn't limited to governments and corporations. People can be corrupted just by a sugar/caffeine drink. We have a lot more power than people like to admit; if we didn't, there wouldn't be so much money in PR.
Now if we made a cross between that, and this, we'd have the perfect defense :-)
I think also that it's much easier to spot when things are done wrong than when things are done right, as things done wrong will (by definition) result in an unexpected and undesired event, whereas when things are done right (in the context of long term decisions) there isn't an event where you can come out and announce success, more it becomes part of the status quo. Probably also though many good forward-thinking decisions have become social-habits, in that individuals don't need to consider that, for example, learning to read and write, will be a good thing to do for their personal long term, because it has already been decided so now it's just a done thing (once again, part of the status quo).
Of coures we also have democracies that are limping along because when given the chance the masses will often vote for things like "let's spend less money on educating our children", but then complain 10-20 years later when there's an unskilled generation entering the workforce missing vital skills which negatively affects the economy. Well DUH!
I think people's sense of foresight goes down when their sense of entitlement goes up, and a sense of entitlement is one thing that, particulary in the west, we have waaaaaay too much of, to the detriment of our race as a whole :-/
It's only a centimeter if we're talking physical distance between the keys it takes to press each of the letters, so really, it depends on your metric.