Thread: Century of the Self Documentary

Ok that IS an interesting perspective Croc.

I don't agree with it though. I think that they can THINK what they like - the problem is that the USA takes action around the globe based on subjective info. That is what I don't like.

And "US bases are cool" incidentally, that's exactly what they are trying to make people think with their cheezy base radio stations, "open days" and other campaigns.
But "I ain't buyin' it"

P.S. Regarding Crocodile's statements about Paleolithic food-production -- Croc definitely should've used some qualifying phrase like "per capita", but otherwise the observation has empirical evidence from archeology to support it.

For example, some Paleolithic hunters definitely used the hunting method of "stampeding the entire herd of bison over the cliff to their deaths; then butchering five or six bison for their meat and hides while leaving the rest of the dead animals to rot in the sun." * On a per capita basis (that is, considered as a ratio of the number of animals killed against the number of humans who were sustained by the meat and hides harvested) this stampede-hunting was almost unbelievably wasteful and inefficient, but since human populations were so small, the inefficiency wasn't very destructive to the environment. Also, some primitive agricultural peoples used the wasteful practice of deliberately burning down large areas of forest or grassland in order to kill two birds with one stone: it quickly got rid of the native plants so that the open fields could be planted with crops, and also enriched the soil with ashes.

Nowadays, we are in many ways vastly more efficient at food production, but our population numbers are also vastly larger, and thus our "total environmental footprint" as a species is bigger/worse than in Paleolithic times.

* At least some American Indians apparently continued to use this method until Europeans reintroduced ** the horse to North America, as well as firearms. Horses and guns from Europe made it possible for Native Americans to hunt more selectively and efficiently than they ever had in pre-Columbian times, killing only as many animals as they needed. Meanwhile, some of the Europeans went around shooting thousands of bison just "for sport" from moving trains, thus helping to create the modern perceptions about wasteful white people vs. indigenous-brown-people in harmony with Mother Earth.

** Some scientists believe that horses went extinct in the Americas (where they had originally evolved, and had lived for millions of years) because they were overhunted by the prehistoric humans who had recently invaded arrived in the Americas from Siberia. So the Europeans HAD TO "reintroduce" the horse to America because the ancestors of nature-loving Amerindians had totally wiped out the animals! Mind you, this theory is difficult to prove with certainty, and an alternative hypothesis is that long-term climate changes and the resulting changes to vegetation were the main factor that killed off the equines in their native continent. It may also be that there's truth to both hypotheses -- that climate change had caused the population of horses to shrink dramatically, and overhunting by prehistoric humans was the "final nail in the coffin". There's little doubt, however, that Paleolithic hunters who arrived via the Bering Strait did cause "stress" to indigenous American mammal populations, thousands of years before the white Europeans arrived across the Atlantic.

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

Nowadays, we are in many ways vastly more efficient at food production, but our population numbers are also vastly larger, and thus our "total environmental footprint" as a species is bigger/worse than in Paleolithic times.

Well, overall it definitely is, but I think I mentioned that magic "in that aspect alone" excuse phrase. We don't hunt for food, so even though our population is larger than in the Paleolithic, we still hunt for food much less than we used to. However, we have other adverse effects indirectly caused by the food production, especially the chemical production. And we have other areas of production which are not environmentally-friendly. Anyways, my whole point was that the living standards does not necessarily directly linked to the relative environmental harm, rather the opposite might be true. Hanna insists her logic of: "Oh, if Africa would start living like the US, our planet ecology would collapse! So, don't believe in the Capitalism which urges to live the consumerist style but believe in the Socialism which doesn't ..." and so forth. All I was trying to say that one of the major nature destruction happens in Africa. People there live in so harsh conditions that they don't find any will to care about the environment. It's the Americans and the Europeans which find time and will to collect the used batteries and dispose of them properly. The environmental impact directly depends on the TECHNOLOGY and not on the DISTRIBUTION. If the planet territory is not enough, we can take off and terraform Mars or Venus for example, or live in the donut space stations. Or whatever. The Socialism vs the Communism vs the Capitalism is mostly about the distribution of goods and services and not about care for the Mother Nature.

Originally Posted by Hanna

the problem is that the USA takes action around the globe based on subjective info. That is what I don't like. the problem is that the USA takes action around the globe based on subjective info. That is what I don't like.

Sure, it's your right to buy whatever you like or like whatever you buy, but it's subjective, so no complaints in this forum about that, please.