It is now NOT your fathers Covid... Mask up !!

PLEASE, as an intelligent person, explain to me how using vaccination against smallpox (as just one example) is a "temporary misguided efforts to delay the inevitable". It wiped out whole races when carried around by 'explorers' and is likely to re-appear only if used by terrorists - if it is then the vaccine stockpiles will be used. Or do you really believe it better we allowed such diseases to run rampant and wipe out whole sections of the human race?

 

well first thanks for such a civilized response to my post. its a good example of how grown men should behave. my post reflects on johnny b's post that bascially nature will have its way and i believe that is true. for me, its a legitimate question how humankind should use its power to temporarily alter the course of our development. to consider this you have to step back and contemplate the natural world however you understand it over millions of years and modern humankinds participation in it over the past thousands of years.

if you look at what humankind has done over the past two hundred years then you can point to many "successes" such as vaccinations and smallpox. how about agricultural progress, metallurgy, political control of "civilization". have you read "tragedy of the commons"? easy to find a pre'cis on the net. basically it predicts that multiple uncontrolled users of limited resources will use them to the extinction of the resource. "tragedy" uses as an example of herdsmen using common pasture resources. it does not take much imagination to look at the world as a whole, with all its resources that "nature" has provided, and how countries are destroying our world in its entirety.

i was born in 1942 and grew up in what i believe has been the greatist civilization ever produced by mankind as far as human comfort, individual freedoms and use of resources for their contemporary benefit that has ever existed. but to what end? in my opinion we are proving to be no more capable of protecting the future than the herdsmen of "tragedy" we are spending huge fortures in the quest to "conquer" space and send men to the mood while our cities are littered with our failures as a civilization.

is there really anyone who can sit down and take the time to contemplate the course human civilization is taking and predict a good outcome? can anyone really believe in that? the problem for us, like for the herdsmen, is that for our own time our efforts produce results that are pleasing to us. is our intellect so limited that we can only make decisions based on our own satisfaction and not of the future of our progeny?

the response to covid is the best and most absurd example i have ever personally witnessed in the misappropriation of human energy and effort. in my opinion we as a species are going off the rails while our hands are reaching for the stars.

sir "notmyrealnameplease", i understand if you do not agree with me. and i apologize for quoting johnnyb if my case and position is more than he wants to endorse. but i do believe men need forums to share their thinking and this is mine and is offered for your consideration.

 

For many humans it is difficult to look beyond choices that lead to short term gratification, examples:

people who get their priorities wrong and choose to buy a nice car/bike/tv/phone, rather than invest in a safe house or in education;

people who don't consider their future health when deciding to smoke, drink or eat unhealthy;

some politician promising to halt immigrants (who "steal your jobs" and "poison your culture") gets elected even if a country's population is aging and immigration is desperately needed to ensure that tomorrow there will be enough nurses and doctors to care for the old;

politicians, almost without exception, not acknowledging any issues that will likely become manifest after the next election (just look at the halfhearted approach to climate change);

Obviously you can read "voters" where it says "politicians".

And no, in case anyone wonders, I am not immune to temptations myself.

The crises we humans are forced to confront, like the current Covid one, the climate, the limited resources, these are increasingly requiring a planetwide response rather than nation states blaming each other for wrong choices. Unfortunately, while these crises suggest that we are in need of more cooperation, and that the era of the nation states is nearing the end of its useful life, I fear that the current political climate, with opportunistic strongmen/demagogues/populists on the rise, is very detrimental to cooperation; there are plenty examples, just look at Brexit, similar opposition to cooperation in other countries, the US leaving the Paris treaty on climate and WHO, China antagonizing its neighbours with their nine-dash China sea policy, just to name a few.

So, should we just throw the towel and adopt a defeatist idea that nothing will work and we are bound to destroy the planet? No of course not, for the sake of our children and grandchildren we should definitely not give up on finding a balanced way to live on our planet without destroying our habitat.

 

I was enjoying your post until you mentioned BREXIT. What has that got to do with anything?

 

i have read your response three times and think i generally agree with it and may i say also i appreciate your taking the time to register your opinions. when i think of this general issue i tend to think of about 4000 years from the beginning of the AD calendar to the year 4000 which puts us now about halfway, or about 40 (25 year generations) generations down the road with 40 to go to get to 4000. i can think with gratitude for some of the things previous generations have done for us but find it almost impossible to predict even 2100 let alone 4000! Moores law of the half time of the doubling of chip storage capacity and i read that most people now feel that applies to technology in general. if we are not good stewards of the knowledge we have now, what does the future hold? it seems to me we are not using our newfound knowledge wisely but i do not have a plan on how to change it. i am just afraid we are squandering our chance to be different. and i believe when all is said and done, nature will have her way.

 

BREXIT was democratically won, maybe Dutchie was referring to the leftwing snowflakes and the EU trying to scruple BREXIT.

Lets not bring politics into this thread (Not your fathers Covid.. mask up)

Many thanks.

 

Brexit is merely an example of a country deciding to "go it alone" and deciding cooperation is not for them, just like the other examples I gave.

 

Well my Friend, the Philippines have done that for years and look where it has Got them