Humanity and why we have hope.

[too-open-minded]

So for the longest, I looked at our species with a mild distaste. After I took us off the pedestal that we put ourselves on as the most prestigious species on our planet everything started looking up. We have come a long way from our primate ancestors.

It was only a few hundred years ago most the world was in the slave trade.

 

Yes we pollute, yes were wasteful, and yes most of our governments/systems are not perfect but they are improving. Were still evolving. So to me as long as we don't kill ourselves off with war or depletion of our resources, our future is possible.

 

Anybody have a stand on if they think our species will make it off the planet or perish on it?

[imatfaal]

I think we will withstand everything except the Killer Bees! A little more seriously we are spread out, and even though becoming more homogeneous we are pretty diverse, so if the climate change doesn't get us, and we manage to avoid a real pandemic - I think we will expand. But it is a question that cannot really be answered other than through a gut-feeling.

 

 

"Aah...but the killer bees are nothing compared to ants! You can't         kill them! They are like sheep, they are going to take over!!"

[Phi for All]

So for the longest, I looked at our species with a mild distaste. After I took us off the pedestal that we put ourselves on as the most prestigious species on our planet everything started looking up. We have come a long way from our primate ancestors.

It was only a few hundred years ago most the world was in the slave trade.

 

Yes we pollute, yes were wasteful, and yes most of our governments/systems are not perfect but they are improving. Were still evolving. So to me as long as we don't kill ourselves off with war or depletion of our resources, our future is possible.

 

Anybody have a stand on if they think our species will make it off the planet or perish on it?

Now that you can look at the species a bit more objectively, you can trade in the pedestal for a ladder. Other species are extremely important, but we're definitely at the top of the ladder when it comes to the future of the planet.

 

No other animal combines our intelligence with our skill at tool use and our ability to communicate and cooperate. This allows us an awareness of the future that no other animal comes close to.

 

We've done pretty well surviving the discovery of uranium. Not out of the woods quite yet, but we've steered clear of complete insanity and that says a lot about us. I've heard it said that may be one of the reasons we haven't seen any other space-faring races yet, that it's very difficult to survive the dangers of such a jump in destructive potential.

 

I definitely think we'll be going off-planet, and fairly soon. I'd like to see us work globally on a space-based solar array. This would be a huge impetus to invest in our system, learn more about mining in space, and allow us to build offworld using resources found offworld. Once we start that, I don't think you'll be able to stop us. And if we're working as a single human race towards these ends, that can't be a bad thing for us here at home either.

[Ophiolite]

There are three possibilities:

 

1) If there is no purpose to it all then I think placing ourselves at the top of the ladder is presumptuous. Intellect is hardly relevant since anything we think is meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Rapidity of breeding would be much more important.

 

2) If there is a purpose to it all then it is likely that the evolution of self awareness and curiosity are part of that purposed. However, given such a teleological twist we must ask, "What comes next?".

 

3) We can decide on a purpose.

[too-open-minded]

Why does there have to be a purpose or reason for the significance of our existence for anything we do to matter? If there is no purpose in our existence, that doesn't mean anything we think is meaningless in the grande scheme of things.

 

I'm going to die one day, and eventually forgotten but maybe I can contribute to the longevity of humanity. Even if our species does make it off the planet, I doubt we will survive in the universe for eternity. My attempts to contribute to humanity are still worth it in my opinion.

[Ophiolite]

So you have elected my possibility number 3.

[proximity1]

I'm less optimistic than you about the future. But, as you're a good deal younger than I, I'm pleased you're more optimistic. I often agree with your views and this thread is another example of why I find your posts interesting.

 

I agree--we didn't (and don't) deserve to be up on that pedestal. I also agree that we are still evolving. For me, there can't even be a question about that. We're evolving and that shall go on as long as human-kind exists---and, whatever comes after us, in an evolutionary sense, will be "our descendants" and that of others from whom we are descended, just as we are descendants of earlier living organisms. But all other living organisms are also still evolving. We can point to forms that are in very great danger of extinction and others in lesser degrees of danger of it. I think we have only the slightest idea as to how near or far our own kind is to becoming extinct since so many variables are involved and so many of them can change so suddenly.

 

Only with regard to technology does it seem to me that humans have "come a long way" from our primate anscestors (PAs). And I think that that is a great part of why we set such great store by technology--wrongly set such great store by it, in my opinion. Otherwise, we are, I think, still extremely close to our PAs in every way other than technology.

 

If I find cause for hope, it's due to my view that our "species" (forgive that term, please) is so terribly pathetic that we have practically unlimited room for improvement and, unless we really do make a world-ending (that is, for our own kind) mess of it, we almost have to improve greatly from where we are--which is only technically advanced from where we started: ignorant, frightened, superstitous and dangerously impulsive. Science as a practical endeavor has aided in attenuating all of those tendencies. At the same time, it has also been touched and tainted by all of them since they're deeply part of our psyche.

 

One improvement we should make and make soon-- a.s.a.p.-- is to reconcile ourselves to remaining permanently and solely on this, our home, planet. That should help encourage us to protect and preserve it--the only home we have and the only home we are likely ever to have.

 

Clearly, I take a view which is poles apart from that presented by Phi for All @ N° 3, above. I regard PfA's assessment as a classic case of extreme anthropocentric thinking. I think it's really only our relatively stupendous ignorance as a "species" that permits one to view as credible such assessments as,

 

 

 

"we're definitely at the top of the ladder when it comes to the future of the planet,"

 

 

 

or

 

 

"No other animal combines our intelligence with our skill at tool use and our ability to communicate and cooperate."

 

"This allows us an awareness of the future that no other animal comes close to."

 

 

 

(We presume to be aware of "the future". Historically, our track-record of "awareness" is not much to be proud of.)

 

 

 

"We've done pretty well surviving the discovery of uranium."

 

 

 

( For what?, a century? That's less than the blink of an eye in geological time. Since discovering uranium, we've haven't had time to draw a breath yet. I think talk of "surviving" the discovery of uranium is wildly premature.)

 

 

 

"Not out of the woods quite yet, but we've steered clear of complete insanity and that says a lot about us."

 

 

 

( ??? Since humans "norm" their social habits, taking whatever haphazardly comes, for completely random reasons, to be dominant, talk of our relative sanity is, again, it seems to me, a blushingly anthropocentric view of "sane" or "sanity".)

 

 

 

"I've heard it said that may be one of the reasons we haven't seen any other space-faring races yet, that it's very difficult to survive the dangers of such a jump in destructive potential.

 

 

Or it could be that our viewing aparatus conditions us to "look for" such "races" in all the wrong ways and places. The comment is fraught with a human's-eye-view-of "a world of assumptions" about what "other space-faring races" means. We know, of course, that this is intended to imply the construction of vessels with, of course, something analogous to what we think of as "crews". That is all so much "Star Trek"-thinking.

 

( Have microbes travelled in space? Not, of course, "intentionally," they haven't, as we see ithings. So, if they have, we don't count that as a "space-faring race". We're really looking for something that at least reads constructed measuring instruments calibrated on a mathematical basis. Unless and until we run into that, we wouldn't necessarily recognize a space-faring race or organism even if it made its home in our small intenstines and lived there since it first inhabited our pre-human anscestors' intestinal tracts. )

 

 

 

"I definitely think we'll be going off-planet, and fairly soon. I'd like to see us work globally on a space-based solar array. This would be a huge impetus to invest in our system, learn more about mining in space, and allow us to build offworld using resources found offworld. Once we start that, I don't think you'll be able to stop us. And if we're working as a single human race towards these ends, that can't be a bad thing for us here at home either."

 

 

 

Leaving aside the fact that never, ever, in the entire known history of humankind have all its terrestrial members ever " work(ed) as a single human race towards these (or any) ends," I'm at a loss for how "working as a single human race towards these ends" is necessarily something that "can't be a bad thing for us here at home either."

 

I think we'll be staying here for well beyond the "forseeable future," and that all of this "investment", which is the socially-uppercrust's wet-dream idea of 'progress,' would be better spent on efforts to develop a real and operating democratic form of government somewhere on Earth; better spent on reducing the gaping and growing gulf which divides the "haves" from the "have-nots" for which we are still far too little ashamed.

 

If you really want to extrapolate from terrestrial human existence to a extra-terrestrial one, then the overwhelming evidence suggests that people shall do "out in space" all the same sorts of things they've done, for better and for so much for worse, here on earth. Why exactly anyone's moving into near-orbital space, or anything beyond that should make them as whole social groups significantly better than the earth-bound humans is an assumption for which I've seen simply zero evidence-based argument and only truly amazing anthropocentric wishful-thinking.

 

But, again, our great strength is in the fact that our room for improvement is boundless--if we don't destroy ourselves first.

 

"We've" been "here"--on earth--only the most fleetingly brief of moments. In that time, we've developped an out-sized pride in our own species that, indeed, it appears no other terrestrial organisms can match, though these latter are far, far, far, far more numerous, have existed eons longer than have "we," and are, by every measure of environmental adaptedness, every bit as "fit" or, more often, far "fitter" than is our kind to the habitats in which these more humble but numerically superior organisms live.

Edited December 22, 2012 by proximity1

[dimreepr]

The one thing I wish, is, our species could evolve out of its pride, of our own specific culture. Imagine, if you will, a world devoid of prejudice; a world that recognises that each human is just that, a human. Not a subset of an arbitrarily defined species; where being born in a specific country, or social group, is better, in some way, than any other; or being born the correct colour, is somehow, greater. When will we learn that culture is imposed (or learnt) rather than just an accident of birth? For me this is our greatest obstacle to achieving true greatness (however long we survive).

[too-open-minded]

We will not evolve out of prejudice. I would think that prejudices will always be around, even once we have evolved into just one race. There will likley still be geographical and cultural differences stemming into problems. Although maybe, if we sustain life in space that could be a thing of the past. Who knows.

[kristalris]

Why we have hope?

 

I guess that we have our hopes vested in science and technological progress seeing the greatest problem that faces us that is without a doubt our own doing: the overpopulation of the planet as with other problems such as climate change etc.

 

The only practical feasible option to remain in having a reasonable hope is if we can organize especially our western societies in a way that we act wisely. Wisdom being the ability of acting creatively intelligent on basis of relevant knowledge (i.e. science) and experience.

 

Our behavioral sciences / psychology have a high commiunis opinio concerning the personality traits of the so called Big Five. As a rule of thumb especially two of these are relevant in this respect: conscientiousness and openness. Someone who scores high on the former is good at planning and getting things organized as opposed to a low scorer who lets everything to his own accord. The former being moreover the winners in our western society if they work hard the latter the losers.

 

People who score high on openness are inquisitive, creative and deemed strange as opposed to those who score low who act as the are supposed to. (They are even deemed certifiably mad by DSM IV & V such as Einstein, Newton etc. Showing BTW the danger of rigid systems such as DSM that should be opposed.)

 

The legal winners in the western society are people who score high on conscientiousness and low on openness. They go by the book (of science as well BTW). This leads to book-wisdom and a bureaucratic following of systems together with exaggerated hopes and expectations concerning issues that are unfathomly complex dynamic processes in society. Processes that are dealt with more and more by rigid systems (like DSM). Systems in which banks for instance can get away with conning clients as long as they do it via the correct formalism. Throwing our western societies in a financial crises of which all the repercussions are yet to be felt. Systems that we can only fathom by at best rules of thumb. Issues however that need quick decisive actions based on educated guesswork.

 

My philosophy would be to copy what long standing successful businesses have done in quick changing environments: have good research & development departments; good production departments and good sales departments. All these are critical. The open minded creative personalities should have the lead in R&D with the conscientious in support. In production it is the other way around. In the legal system conscientiousness sells. Our western society has more and more even in science and also in the legal systems been taken over by the conscientious personalities. This needs to be counterbalanced IMO.

 

The problem is they on average can't guess as well as the creative open-minded personalities. They aren't wise.

 

So organize research departments in all critical issues of society: the legal system, the schooling system and even in science and explicitly choose the open-minded persons to lead that. It's good educated guesswork that is needed via wisdom and not (only) book wisdom for instance to decide what should be funded and what not.

 

If you don't see that science only provides probabilities on several critical issues and believe that it always provides the answers then you believe to that extent in pseudo science.

 

I.e place your hope in wisdom and get that organized.

 

We don't need to leave the planet to have a hope. (There is a chance that our species will go extinct so it invariably will given enough time.)

 

So try and live as good as possible trying to be as less a bother to others including future generations and enjoy the ride: i.e. have hope and act accordingly.

[dimreepr]

The only question is how long?

[kristalris]

The only question is how long?

Indeed. And my answer is: for as long as we can oversee.

[ZVBXRPL]

So for the longest, I looked at our species with a mild distaste. After I took us off the pedestal that we put ourselves on as the most prestigious species on our planet everything started looking up. We have come a long way from our primate ancestors.

It was only a few hundred years ago most the world was in the slave trade.

 

Yes we pollute, yes were wasteful, and yes most of our governments/systems are not perfect but they are improving. Were still evolving. So to me as long as we don't kill ourselves off with war or depletion of our resources, our future is possible.

 

Anybody have a stand on if they think our species will make it off the planet or perish on it?

We have become WORSE than our primate ancestors.

At least back then they had ignorance to blame for their evil and vicious nature

Now with our improved intelligence and knowledge, we still act like primitive animals

Look at all the wars, crime, poverty and social injustice that exists throughout the world

We have no improved one bit and will never improve, because human beings are inherently evil with no compassion for their fellow human being, other animals and life or for the planet in general

99.99999% of humans care only about themselves, just look at the predominant political system that exists globally right now

[iNow]

We have no improved one bit and will never improve

 

Are you familiar with the concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy?

[too-open-minded]

weve come a long way man, only 200 years ago was slavery widespread in the world and that the blink of an eye to our species. Weve made leaps and bounds the past few thousand years and honestly I think our future doesn't look so dim.

 

Self fulfilling prophecy, iNow has a point. ZVBXRPL, i'll give you an example.

 

So I pretty much had a high school sweetheart for two years. Then we decided to take our relationship a step further. While she left to start college I worried she would forget about me and find someone else. Well, she did. Although had I not worried about it, that may have never happened.

 

Self fulfilling prohpecy aint no joke, change your perception man. Happiness is not having what you enjoy, its enjoying what you have. Might sound cliche but your perspective on a situation whether it be your life or the human race will inevitably effect it.

weve come a long way man, only 200 years ago was slavery widespread in the world and that the blink of an eye to our species. Weve made leaps and bounds the past few thousand years and honestly I think our future doesn't look so dim.

 

Self fulfilling prophecy, iNow has a point. ZVBXRPL, i'll give you an example.

 

So I pretty much had a high school sweetheart for two years. Then we decided to take our relationship a step further. While she left to start college I worried she would forget about me and find someone else. Well, she did. Although had I not worried about it, that may have never happened.

 

Self fulfilling prohpecy aint no joke, change your perception man. Happiness is not having what you enjoy, its enjoying what you have. Might sound cliche but your perspective on a situation whether it be your life or the human race will inevitably effect it.

Btw I know our species isn't going to live for an eternity, At some point even if we do make it off the planet we will die out. Its inevitable. Although that doesn't mean we can't strive to live as long as possible and find as many answers to the universe as possible?

 

I know i'm going to die when I play nazi zombies, yet I kill zombies till i'm dead.

Dear god if you haven't played nazi zombies on black ops 2 go do that right now.

[kristalris]

 

Btw I know our species isn't going to live for an eternity, At some point even if we do make it off the planet we will die out. Its inevitable. Although that doesn't mean we can't strive to live as long as possible and find as many answers to the universe as possible?

 

Well yes, we should strive to live as long as possible as a rule of thumb. Agree. Yet, if you are trying to convince me that it is a good idea to try and overpopulate other planets as a course to solve the problems on this one I disagree. It would only help if we could find a habitable alternative for say half our current population, and then we would still have to try and reach a balance in population growth and mortality rate on this one and that one too.

 

Alas it'll be a hell of a problem to get at 1/10th of c and the traveling times are literately killing.

 

Further more we have already left the planet, albeit not to colonize other planets (yet) but only the moon for a short period and ISS.

 

Now some scientists are seriously looking towards a one way trip to Mars. (Even Gerard 't Hooft is among them.) Well if the idea is to colonize it then that is a bad idea IMO. If a few adventurers are willing to go there in order to further science in a way that is quicker then any alternative I won't oppose, but won't support it either. I don't want to have on my conscience the possible horrors that might befall these people in a quest for a sooner knowledge that could also be acquired later, if that is indeed the case. (I'm not convinced that robots can't do all the required jobs yet or very soon anyway.)

 

I know i'm going to die when I play nazi zombies, yet I kill zombies till i'm dead.

Dear god if you haven't played nazi zombies on black ops 2 go do that right now.

Well, I've declared war on the Vogons, but that is a different story and a game you can play in real life. to which I hope many will join in.

[too-open-minded]

lol what game?

[PeterJ]

Proximity - Your post above may be the longest forum post I've ever agreed with. A very sane view I would say.

[kristalris]

lol what game?

You familiar with the Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy and what the Vogons therein depict?

[cladking]

We are on a collision course with reality caused by greed and superstition. We try to remedy the effects of excessive waste by wasting ever more and creating an accounting system that perverts reality itself. There's no way off but through some new invention such as fusion power or a new direction but there are too many beholden to the status quo for this to be a viable option.

 

There are several severe tests coming in the next decades but we might not survive to even the first if we don't put our house in order.

[Phi for All]

Clearly, I take a view which is poles apart from that presented by Phi for All @ N° 3, above. I regard PfA's assessment as a classic case of extreme anthropocentric thinking. I think it's really only our relatively stupendous ignorance as a "species" that permits one to view as credible such assessments as,

I specifically replaced the pedestal with a ladder so it wasn't an anthropocentric argument. I think your desire to cast humans in a negative light made you misread my words. A ladder allows for improvement while a pedestal enshrines us. We're not the ultimate animal on this planet, but when it comes to being guardians of the future of the planet, there's no other animal even in contention.

(We presume to be aware of "the future". Historically, our track-record of "awareness" is not much to be proud of.)

I'm aware that your pessimism ignores our successes and simply focuses on our failures.

( For what?, a century? That's less than the blink of an eye in geological time. Since discovering uranium, we've haven't had time to draw a breath yet. I think talk of "surviving" the discovery of uranium is wildly premature.)

So why bother talking in geological time with regards to human achievement? It sounds like you're just going to look for any way to make us look worse and ignore what we have achieved.

 

I guessed you missed the part where I said "We've done pretty well surviving the discovery of uranium" and "we're not out of the woods yet". That would explain why you strawmanned my position by claiming my statement is premature. It's not, you know. We haven't wiped ourselves out with nuclear weapons, despite all the capability.

( ??? Since humans "norm" their social habits, taking whatever haphazardly comes, for completely random reasons, to be dominant, talk of our relative sanity is, again, it seems to me, a blushingly anthropocentric view of "sane" or "sanity".)

???? The insanity I obviously referred to is global nuclear war. The rest of your sentence was so choppy as to completely dilute whatever meaning you were trying to convey to me. Please try again.

Or it could be that our viewing aparatus conditions us to "look for" such "races" in all the wrong ways and places. The comment is fraught with a human's-eye-view-of "a world of assumptions" about what "other space-faring races" means. We know, of course, that this is intended to imply the construction of vessels with, of course, something analogous to what we think of as "crews". That is all so much "Star Trek"-thinking.

 

( Have microbes travelled in space? Not, of course, "intentionally," they haven't, as we see ithings. So, if they have, we don't count that as a "space-faring race". We're really looking for something that at least reads constructed measuring instruments calibrated on a mathematical basis. Unless and until we run into that, we wouldn't necessarily recognize a space-faring race or organism even if it made its home in our small intenstines and lived there since it first inhabited our pre-human anscestors' intestinal tracts. )

This tangent tells me that you have huge, untapped reserves of disdain and loathing for our "pathetic" species. Some people do this as a way to set themselves up as some kind of authority on what humans ought to be doing. Despite people like you, I think the species as a whole is uniquely capable of extending the future of this planet's life beyond the life of the planet itself. When the sun goes red giant, I think we'll be watching it happen from another system entirely.

[kristalris]

lol what game?

Aside from the Vogon game as a metaphor let me explain my position at bit clearer within known philosophic points of view:

 

It is a bit the discussion between choosing for the philosopher king of Plato and the democratic open society by Karl Popper in his The open society and its enemies apposing among others Plato's view.

 

I think you can marry the two points of view a bit like the Greeks did. In war or crises choose a dictator and democracy when in piece. Like Churchill I agree that democracy is the least worse way of governance (or words to that effect.). It needs checks and balances. Because otherwise you get a dictatorship of 50% plus one.

 

The problem is that our society is changing faster than our social structures can cope with. A paradigm change takes 10 to 15 years is an accepted rule of thumb. Alas our society changes faster than that. A just law system should counterbalance to a degree too rigid majority rule. It should't be its exponent. Alas this is more and more the case: take in the USA according to Wikipedia a sharp rise in the amount of detained persons has come about the last years. At the moment 1 in a hundred citizens are detained! A gross and widening imbalance between losers and winners in the system has emerged. The same prospect can be seen emerging in the Netherlands. Uninformed majority rule will cause this. Only the voice of wisdom given from a figure of authority - the comunis opninio in psychology shows as (as does history) - can counter balance this. Because the legal system not one judge rules all. Yet the problem of effectively counterbalancing stops when the judges themselves play a rigid system. Especially if the judges who are in the supreme courts are highly conscientiousness. The system gets inherently more and more bureaucratic. Preventing through punishing risk taking and creative not going by the book where the fast changing society needs exactly that.

 

The law system effects the thinking in all walks of life. Only wise counterbalancing can work. Only then when domestically we have a just system can we hope to get a global just system that actually has a chance of working.

 

Although I agree with the pessimists there is extremely probably greater hardship ahead than we already have. I disagree with them that we shouldn't do our damnedest to strive to lessen the problems. Science and technology are our only hope for this, but only within a wise system that can very quickly be changed. This by simply reorganize the existing team of judges in a separate "R&D department" just for giving quick advise. Twenty years ago this already worked implicitly in the Dutch legal system and partly still does.

 

IMO this system failed due to already to high hopes (to good sales = bad sales) that couldn't be met and where seen so due to - recent - internet. A gift and a curse. The wise judges slowly but gradually where replaced by conscientious more bureaucratic judges in key positions of the process. Positions where a temporary advice steered the cases in the correct direction. The score was seen to plummet of confessed serious mistakes.

 

The problem is we don't accept mistakes anymore. Hence a more and more bureaucratic system. If you however organize it like in the aircraft industry after a crash and have a independent research into what went wrong. If it was a honest mistake after a correct proceeding then there is no need to take what ever action, apart from correcting it. The latter is now nigh impossible because perfection has been sold. And is thus demanded however unreasonable.

 

Apart from that it is needed to try and inform the people better (to which internet is again a gift (and a curse)). As long as you accept the democratic justice system this idea is neither left nor right wing or religious. It doesn't touch democratic choices as such. What it primarily does is provide good evidence and proof system. It also works for a jury system. You only have to think out of the box to see this.

 

As such in the Dutch legal system we have had several admitted horrendous mistakes in which a guilty verdict was given after an extremely conscientious proceeding. The convicted had bad luck in the judges, DA's and maybe lawyers in a system that asked too much of these people.

 

If you change your legal system to be just so will your society. Then and only then can the power of science and technology have a hope in hell to do far above average good for society.

 

For instance if science and technology yields greater crops for mankind it doesn't help if it only leads to a population explosion. In a just society where people can be shore that their offspring has a good chance of growing old and that they will have a pension of sorts and will be taken care of is only feasible within belief and trust that that will work. This trust is only possible in a just society. As such nothing to do with politics. Everybody (nearly at least) wants to believe in a just law system. That however is globally in dire need of reorganization.

 

Like in any football match redeploying the same players in the field can work immediate miracles. They start working together. Psychology is the key.

[too-open-minded]

Oh I plan on playing a different game, called getting the F out this country and moving to Sweden ASAP.

 

I agree with you though man, although there is too much money tied up into all those systems to talk anyone into changing them.

 

Our prisons are privatized, book companies are in ties with our educational system, the FED and banking industry, things like that alone should point out flaws in our government. Yes I agree we sort of, our society evolved too fast for our government to compensate with the rapid change.

 

I don't think the problems in our country can be fixed, this is where most of my pessimism towards humanity came from. I'm moving to Sweden and hoping the best for America.

[kristalris]

Oh I plan on playing a different game, called getting the F out this country and moving to Sweden ASAP.

 

I agree with you though man, although there is too much money tied up into all those systems to talk anyone into changing them.

 

Our prisons are privatized, book companies are in ties with our educational system, the FED and banking industry, things like that alone should point out flaws in our government. Yes I agree we sort of, our society evolved too fast for our government to compensate with the rapid change.

 

I don't think the problems in our country can be fixed, this is where most of my pessimism towards humanity came from. I'm moving to Sweden and hoping the best for America.

Sweden, will slowly but gradually with out a doubt have the same problems more or less sooner or later if they don't already have it. All large organisations - like states- tend towards more and more bureaucracy.

 

In a democracy like even in the States it should be possible to get it on the political map by making it a issue that one can vote on irrespective of current political divide.

 

I hope for you that you don't like to drink alcohol because as far as I know it is extremely expensive. Apart from that although Dutch is difficult language for foreigners to learn, I think Swedish is even more difficult. Anyway if you don't already speak the lingo they are as far as I know very good in English in the land of Abba.

 

Scandinavia is on my places to visit list, yet been in the States. I guess everywhere are pro's and con's. I've been to the States ages ago and was and still am impressed by the great pro's and dito con's. Take Wikipedia that is the up side of the States and there is many more that is good about the States. As with the Swedes I'm sure.

 

In short, I guess you haven't really given up hope on the States as a reason to leave? If so, aren't you afraid by placing your expectations so high that Sweden might prove a disappointment?

[too-open-minded]

I'm not setting myself up for a fallacy of a perfect place, nowhere is perfect and i'm sure there will be things about Sweden I don't like. Especially alcohol being expensive. However I really want to experience a different culture, the way Sweden goes about handling human rights to me reflects upon their culture. I'm also sick of patriotism here among our military. I'm sick that every time I buy something my taxes go towards a military such as Americas. I like how Sweden is a neutral country. I'm sure there will be plenty to learn about what I do and don't like there.

 

You know I even tried to contact the Swedish government and become a refugee, however just because i'm a pacifist in a excessively militant country does not make me one . Looks like I have to wait until I have the right funds to move to Sweden, get a job, and claim citizenship.

Edited January 10, 2013 by too-open-minded