01-11-2022, 05:45 PM
(01-11-2022, 01:11 AM)TatteredGenX Wrote:(12-29-2021, 03:55 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: "Survival of the fittest" is now as much a philosophical position as a scientific one. It can extend to institutions, firms, and political entities. As businesses Sears and K-Mart, both once-impressive entities are moribund. They failed to adapt to a changing environment. I'm not certain that business entities (unless mom-and-pop outfits that die when the heirs find some easier way of making a living) have a set lifetime. Political entities? The United States is one of the oldest of the existing ones, and if I am to make a guess of what political system now intact will still be much the same a thousand years from now, the USA should be one of the most likely. The USA has proved as flexible as it is imposing.
But be at the wrong place at the wrong time, and you will be struck down. Become old and inflexible, and you become irrelevant fast. "Earth" itself was the wrong place to be when the asteroid hit at Chixculub. Size is usually good for winning fights with other creatures (elephants, hippos, and rhinos are rarely on some predator's menu), but not with facing hurricane-force winds of extreme heat. The seas were not safe havens. No large dinosaur had the stability to avoid dying when tossed into a tree. We wouldn't, either.
Hi Pbrower. Sorry for the very late reply.
Neither Safari or Chrome likes this forum on my phone, for replying. I gave it one shot then decided I'd best be on a computer, then plum forgot about it.
Good point on the world of business.
I was thinking more of the 6th extinction, the way we have destroyed earth, that the world seems more and more primed for war, and that the seeming majority of people seem to not care.
It seems to me that we need to start caring, or this will not end well. Our ecosystems and the cycles that support them are a pretty complex piece of machinery. We have tampered with the mechanism without a clue as to what will happen. Even our scientists have stated they do not know what all is involved, or what will happen.
I keep hanging onto the hope that the masses can convince the few that action needs to happen.
The Fourth Turning book was most interesting in this aspect--with the same archetypes showing up again and again.
I have high hopes for the Homeland Generation, and the one yet to be born.
My own generation needs to buck up and come to grips with that we aren't in the 1920's Speakeasies any longer, the fun of robbing merchants and cooking booze has come to an end and it is 1939 now.
What is (was?) this century's analogue of the 1920s Speakeasies, etc?