[JohnRawls]

Are we approaching a barrier? We have been approaching them all the time and breaking through them. Be it the vacine, crop rotation, industrialisation, energy production etc.

The better question is when will out ability to grow(In numbers, wellbeing etc) overtake our ability to produce a solution to the barrier that is presented to us. You also need to understand that the number growth increases our ability to produce a solution. (there are more factors)

So if you picture it in a purely mathematical function variation then even with ups and downs, then we are only constrained by time. The processes will self correct themselves based on our current position and the time given/needed. Either our growth will slow down or ability to inovate will increase to match the speed of the growth. Even if the function sharply decreases, it will still probably resume the same pattern from a lower position at a later time.

[One Degree]

Are we approaching a barrier? We have been approaching them all the time and breaking through them. Be it the vacine, crop rotation, industrialisation, energy production etc.

The better question is when will out ability to grow(In numbers, wellbeing etc) overtake our ability to produce a solution to the barrier that is presented to us. You also need to understand that the number growth increases our ability to produce a solution. (there are more factors)

So if you picture it in a purely mathematical function variation then even with ups and downs, then we are only constrained by time. The processes will self correct themselves based on our current position and the time given/needed. Either our growth will slow down or ability to inovate will increase to match the speed of the growth.

Excellent post. This is also why I object to global uniformity. It upsets the elasticity that enables these conundrums to work themselves out.

[Potemkin]

Excellent post. This is also why I object to global uniformity. It upsets the elasticity that enables these conundrums to work themselves out.

Precisely. Just as there has been a catastrophic loss of biological diversity over recent centuries, so there has been a corresponding loss of cultural diversity - many ancient civilisations have been overrun, have collapsed, or have been assimilated into the Western hegemony. This loss of cultural and civilisational diversity is extremely dangerous, as it leads to a loss of cultural flexibility and adaptability to future crises.

[Cookie Monster]

Precisely. Just as there has been a catastrophic loss of biological diversity over recent centuries, so there has been a corresponding loss of cultural diversity - many ancient civilisations have been overrun, have collapsed, or have been assimilated into the Western hegemony. This loss of cultural and civilisational diversity is extremely dangerous, as it leads to a loss of cultural flexibility and adaptability to future crises.

Add to the loss of biodiversity, also environmental degradation, climatological change, atomisation of society, etc. It is the logical outcome of capitalism and globalisation. Investors don't care about cultural differences, social-historical context, or all those other 'irrelevant' details. Resources need to be exploited and profits need to be maximised. Anything that interferes those processes will be surgically cut away. Until the masses find themselves completely alienated from their social and natural environment. All we can do is enjoy the ride.

Seriously though I recommend reading Collapse by Jared Diamond in which he describes civilisations in the past which completely collapsed. He then goes on identifying the various conditions that led to the collapse of those civilisations and checks whether those conditions also apply to our global civilisation. I won't spoil his findings.

[Cookie Monster]

Did he find a certain group of secretive people with their own agenda behind the scenes puling the strings in those societies?

Not to my knowledge, Decky. But he may have hidden a message about a certain group of secretive people in order to avoid their attention. So you may have to scrutinise his work on that matter yourself.

[Decky]

They do indeed own all of the publishing companies.

[QatzelOk]

Where did you get the idea that "soldiering on" necessarily means a lack of change?

Oh, there are changes all right.

When a society decides to continue the same practices it's been doing for years and years - inspite of these practices being found out to be survival-threatening - this is a kind of "soldiering on."

But as a society "soldiers on," it ignores the reality of declining life conditions. It is, nonetheless, forced to adapt to increasingly rapid decline, and will do this by reacting to changes. It often reacts by scapegoating, or by reducing freedoms so that people have to continue to race towards the cliff's edge.

[Donna]

"Development" ...this term is getting a bit cringe worthy, no? It literally means that you can have a smartphone with nearly universal wifi access (because internets is a human right) while you sift through a pile of garbage to survive.

[Joka]

Recent research supports the conclusions of a controversial environmental study released 40 years ago: The world is on track for disaster. So says Australian physicist Graham Turner, who revisited perhaps the most groundbreaking academic work of the 1970s,The Limits to Growth.

Written by MIT researchers for an international think tank, the Club of Rome, the study used computers to model several possible future scenarios. The business-as-usual scenario estimated that if human beings continued to consume more than nature was capable of providing, global economic collapse and precipitous population decline could occur by 2030.

However, the study also noted that unlimited economic growth was possible, if governments forged policies and invested in technologies to regulate the expansion of humanity’s ecological footprint. Prominent economists disagreed with the report’s methodology and conclusions. Yale’s Henry Wallich opposed active intervention, declaring that limiting economic growth too soon would be “consigning billions to permanent poverty.”

Turner compared real-world data from 1970 to 2000 with the business-as-usual scenario. He found the predictions nearly matched the facts. “There is a very clear warning bell being rung here,” he says. “We are not on a sustainable trajectory.”

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-n ... 125269840/

"Development" ...this term is getting a bit cringe worthy, no? It literally means that you can have a smartphone with nearly universal wifi access (because internets is a human right) while you sift through a pile of garbage to survive.

Global plantation "development", it's something the owner class tells themselves while patting each other on the back.