The New Robber Barons

[David Horn]

(01-13-2019, 05:06 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(01-12-2019, 04:49 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(01-12-2019, 11:08 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: Dependence on large-scale organisations like states and corporations is the root of the problem. We have to either go back to more a natural way of life, like the Amish did, or find a way for high tech to be usable in independent small scale communities.

The Amish way of life is incompatible with giant cities, let alone high technology, meaning anything more advanced than railroads and bicycles. An education beyond junior high is worthless in their world.

Simple living is more attractive than giant cities and swotting pages full of equations. This is the way Nature meant for us.

Is it? I question that. After all, we are who we are because we have large plastic brains, opposable thumbs, complex vocalization and the ability to sweat. On balance, those are tools that lead to complexity, not simplicity. Take the ability to sweat. If not for that, we would never have been able to work hard physically, form tribes and, later, civilizations. Opposable thumbs made us tool makers and users, which, again, leads to complexity. Plastic brains combined with complex vocalizations made us capable of abstract thinking.

We're geared for challenges, which may make our soon-to-be less demanding world less compatible with our inborne humanity.