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[theinevitable]

Wow, 187 Posts!

Whoa! Is so cool.

[lprkn]

No undercover cops around here, are there?

Alright then.

[theinevitable]

If there is one area in which I think we need to do whatever the fuck we can, regardless of any sort of actual understanding being reached, it is in the case of the environment. On friday, between reading Rousseau who is telling me that all of society is based on the exploitation of the poor, writing a film paper about how greatly modern society has failed the working class, and my human ev professor giving a lecture about how fucked we are in the next 20-50 years... I decided that maybe a good use of my life would be to become an eco-terrorist. I am still not sure that that isn't the best solution.

[Arachno-capitalist]

If there is one area in which I think we need to do whatever the fuck we can, regardless of any sort of actual understanding being reached, it is in the case of the environment. On friday, between reading Rousseau who is telling me that all of society is based on the exploitation of the poor, writing a film paper about how greatly modern society has failed the working class, and my human ev professor giving a lecture about how fucked we are in the next 20-50 years... I decided that maybe a good use of my life would be to become an eco-terrorist. I am still not sure that that isn't the best solution.

Jesus Christ. Id say something about why this is reason people think the american university system is mindwashing people into far left liberals without ever giving the other side of the story, but it would inevitably lead to LFM trying to have make outs with me in the form of a 3 page post.

[theinevitable]

I would say that... you just said that thing.

I mean. Rousseau is one of the great minds of modern political thought. we also read Hobbes, Locke, Plato, and Machiavelli. All sides were represented. The sum of reading all of these is that I agree with Rousseau, because all of the other ones based their theories on things which I fundamentally disagreed with. They all had a lot of interesting things to say, but for a variety of reasons I agree the most with Rousseau.
The film class is specifically about Italian Neorealism, which is generally about how much life (in post-war Italy) blew, to put it bluntly. There is not really an alternative view on that. That is what the films are about, and the way I chose to interpret them was not a critical one, as I agreed with most of what they were saying.
As for the environmental stuff, it's all science. This is not a political issue. We have fucked up the world, and it is only getting worse.

In all of these cases, there is not an "other side of the story."

The other side of the story in the first case, is other stuff that we also read in that class.
The other side of the story in the second case would be, I guess, "fascism was awesome for italy, no one got fucked on that deal. Kids starving rules."
The other side of the story in the third case is "LA LA LA LA I'M NOT LISTENING!"
I mean, do you learn about how great Communism is in your economics classes?

I think maybe LFM and A-CAP and I should start a new forum where we just have three-ways. Sorry guys.

[littlefallsmets]

I dunno, man, I've been a far left liberal since I was twelve... college had nothing to do with it at all. If anything, while I was attending a rich man's college as a child of the bottom of the middle class, they tried to pull me to the middle except that I did not relent.

He wants to make the world a better place, he wants everyone to hurt less. If that's wrong, man, I don't wanna be right. Good thing it isn't wrong.

[theinevitable]

Also, i feel like the fact that college-educated people do not tend to be so very liberal belies your point.
I went to a high school where everyone's parents went to college, and none of them seemed very far-left at all.
The people in power in this country went to college, and I don't see a lot of far-left policies in effect.

[Doc]

Jesus Christ. Id say something about why this is reason people think the american university system is mindwashing people into far left liberals without ever giving the other side of the story,

This isn't the most appropriate forum, but this just popped into my head and needed airing:

There is no 'Other Side' in science. There is right and there is wrong and there are controls up the wazoo so you can tell the difference.

Get your politics out of my science popular media!

[theinevitable]

To be fair, in some cases there are legitimate alternative theories. But as far as I can tell, the "alternative theories" of this issue are complete stretches, and politically motivated. He told us, actually, that he is tired of arguing about Global Warming and whether it's a hoax by the left, and it's more productive to talk about deforestation, massive overpopulation, growing energy demands, shrinking availability of drinking water, increasing rate of extinctions, etc.

[Arachno-capitalist]

As for the environmental stuff, it's all science. This is not a political issue. We have fucked up the world, and it is only getting worse.

I mean, do you learn about how great Communism is in your economics classes?

Greenpeace, Al Gore, and the like aren't science at all, thats politics.

No, we don't learn about how great communism is, nor do we learn how great anything is for that matter. We learn economics. Different schools will stress different things, but in the end the data are there for your own interpretation. Which is also my response to Doc.

[V-Adore]

All I have to say is this:

it would inevitably lead to LFM trying to have make outs with me in the form of a 3 page post.

It takes two for sloppy makeouts, dude. You are getting into it at least as much as LFM. LFM's just more energetic.

If you're gonna do it, put your whole tongue into it!

[Arachno-capitalist]

To be fair, in some cases there are legitimate alternative theories. But as far as I can tell, the "alternative theories" of this issue are complete stretches, and politically motivated. He told us, actually, that he is tired of arguing about Global Warming and whether it's a hoax by the left, and it's more productive to talk about deforestation, massive overpopulation, growing energy demands, shrinking availability of drinking water, increasing rate of extinctions, etc.

My take on the global warming thing is that I hear enough conflicting information to be left in the middle. In the end, I believe that yes the earth is getting warmer. Yes greenhouse gas levels are rising. But I think the way people are going about the response is kind of misled.

[theinevitable]

Well, yeah. But it's politics based on science. What my professor told us were facts and figures. The human population has doubled since the 60s. It will probably gain that number of people again in the next... 30 years I think? There isn't enough space on the planet, even if all of it was arable land, to support that many people. Much less if a large portion of us (the western world) continue living the way we do. Some of these figures, he put in perspective. Hunter-gatherer groups, on average, live at a density of about 1 person per 2 square miles. Obviously, they live in a village, but the amount of land they control and subsist off of is proportional to that figure. Currently, we are at a population density of 112 per square mile. And the majority of us use a hell of a lot more resources than a hunter-gatherer.

The data is still there. You can say it's all politics all you want, interpret it however you want. But the numbers don't lie. And right now they're pointing in one direction, and we're all just plugging away happily ignoring them.


PS guys, A-CAP and I can take this to IM/PM if y'all don't want to deal with the makeouts.

[littlefallsmets]

When you follow the money back, though, on the "conflicting information", it always ends up funded by people who are profiting off the status quo and fighting like hell to keep the shared reality in a fashion that is maximally profitable to those people.

You're the economist, follow the money backwards and the conflicting information is nearly always disinformation to protect some kind of economic monopoly that is threatened by the actual truth.

I mean, that's my whole problem with unfettered large-scale corporatist forms of capitalism... there comes a critical mass size for all kinds of businesses where the power of competition breaks down and they function under the weight of their own pre-existing power... not innovation, not competition...

Just throwing itself around like a bull in a china shop under the momentum of some long-ago successes.

The energy industry is such an entrenched juggernaut that it can use its capital to try and squash legitimate competition before it can even begin to spring forth, you see. Competition and all that lovely sounding stuff has broken down and they can hire out people to try and prevent the kind of competition that created their industry to begin with.

There must be a check against it. If academia is the possible check against this particular ensconced monopoly, that prevents competition with the global-warming idea, then academia is a lovely thing... Adam Smith's Invisible Hand long ago washed itself on the matter.

[Arachno-capitalist]

PS guys, A-CAP and I can take this to IM/PM if y'all don't want to deal with the makeouts.

I stepped out for a cigarette without my keys. Im locked out until 4AM. I blame it on global warming, or el nino, or janet reno, one of those.