living for a good cause

default_

which of the following good causes would you choose to invest your life in?

investing for a :

-safer world
-cleaner world
-better world
-changing and dynamic world
-perfect world
-non-evil world
-never ending world
-all of the above
-two or more of the above
-none of the above
-other

Astronuc

Well better probably includes safer and cleaner.

I don't think the world can be 'perfect' assuming we could find a consensus on 'perfect'.

The world/nature/universe is inherently 'changing and dynamic'. Our challenge it to adapt.

The world is never-ending. Our compatiblity with the world is what we must address.

As for a non-evil world - one can simply set a good example and 'do the right thing'.

moe darklight

I chose all (even though to me "perfect" would be imperfect). but if I had to chose one single cause, I would choose a just world. where everyone gets what they deserve (for better or worse). then everything else just falls into place.

JasonRox

Perfect is imperfect?

JasonRox

I try my best to live a life that is not destructive. Our society is shifting into a destructive one, and it's not good at all.

russ_watters

Has society ever been non-destructive? Is such a thing even possible for biological organisms? To me, that's the biggest fallacy in environmentalism - that such a thing could, much less should be done.

radou

Good question. The answer to the former is no. The answer to the other one, is, I believe, for a smaller number of organisms of higher intelligence, probably yes. But then again, it's a smaller number, and definitely not the mirror of the majority. So, the answer is, sadly, no.

moe darklight

I mean it would be no fun if everything was as good as it gets .

in my eyes, the opposite is happening... we're rotting into lethargy.

in the past, society's problems came from people doing too much of the wrong thing. now it comes from people doing to little of the right thing. everyone wants to do as little as possible.

this new thing, "political correctness" is sick. censorship, oppression, and tyranny have always existed, but at least in the past it was so aggressive and in your face that you were driven to do something about it. oppression was a sword or a guillotine, now it comes in the form of a polite little passive-agressive smile.
it was painful, now everything is made so pleasant that no one takes notice of social degradation.

we can say that we have a gun problem, that kids are taking guns to schools, that kids spend all day doing drugs and having unprotected sex, that we have lost our values, etc. etc. ... yet murder and crime rates have gone down considerably in many north american cities (per capita). yes, even since the good ol' 50's..

... murder rates have gone down even more considerably since the 1500's!! ...

so why is it that we've become so obsessed with convincing ourselves that people are becoming increasingly immoral, sadistic, and pure evil with each passing generation --- when the exact opposite is true?

I think it's because we feel empty as a society.

we have to convince ourselves that we have never, as a human race, EVER been this bloody, and this sinful, and this eeeeevil — because that's the only way we feel alive: because the truth is that we have never been this bored and lazy and dull and polite.

the good thing is that we are living in the best possible times, we are at a peak: we have never been so free, so rich, or so healthy. not ever before in human history. a relatively large percentage of today's world population lives freer, healthier, and wealthier lives than even the richest of the rich could have hoped for 300 years ago. our problem is that humans, by nature, always get greedy or sloppy and eventually ruin anything we build.

wow, that was a rant an a half ... I don't know where all that came form, I swear I'm not as pessimistic as I sound!

russ_watters

All organisms need to eat. Eating necessarily destroys that which is consumed. So all organisms at the very least have some minimum level of destruction of their environment that is proportional to their population.

That's only the most basic example, of course. There are plenty more. Plants, for example, essentially fight each other (and any other organism that gets in their way) to the death for sunlight and water, decimating the area around them.

JasonRox

They've answered these questions already?

It seems like in the study of Cellular Automata (spelling?) they're bring structure out of chaotic biological behaviour. In a sense, that seems to direct us to the idea, that constructive life can exist.

JasonRox

I meant destructive in a large sense.

Look at how much we consume! Dang! Eating habits are just horrendous. Not only our we destructive to other fellow members of our society, we are also destructive against our own very body! I mean this in a direct sense, and not the...

Well, people get older and therefore that's destructive.

That's not an counter-argument.