XPost: alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian, alt.sci.sociology, alt.community
On Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:52:24 -0500, Day Brown wrote:
>dh@. wrote:
>>> Its difficult to quantify; an active lifestyle improves the mind. Both
>>> Oriental and Occidental sages say the best life has to offer is tending
>>> a rural garden.
>>
>> I can't agree with that.
>The sages were all literate, so even if living rural, were able to
>consider, and respond to, the comments of other writers, just as we do
>here.
I still can't agree that the best life has to offer is tending a garden.
I can believe it may have been the best thing in their lives, but not
the best life has to offer overall.
>How they would envy broadband.
We are truly fortunate to live in an age where communication and
access to information are so incredibly much better than they have
ever been in the past.
>>> They all also agree cities are cesspools of depravity.
>>
>> They have a point there, since life in cities is pretty much based
>> on interaction with other humans, and competition of various kinds
>> between humans.
>Cities provide an abundance of victims for social predators. You cant do
>much of that in a rural area without the few people around figuring out
>who is responsible. There is no mob to disappear into. A sexy wench cant
>take everything a man has and then find another sucker in a village. All
>the men find out what was going on. You cant be one kind of person
>downtown and something else at home. People know who you are both at
>home and work.
>
>That being the case, social predators leave the villages for cities. In
>time, all that is left in the villages are hardworking honest people.
At least the percentage should be much higher, with just a few
people who can't be much trusted but are still tolerated.
>>> For the nuclear family to grow all of its own food would be a laborious
>>> time consuming effort. But when you ramp production up to the village,
>>> or small business model, the man hours per person drop as you'd expect
>>> for any other small business. The economy of scale is way ahead of
>>> "cottage industry". Which ancestors also understood.
>>
>> You're still not going back far enough to be similar to your comments
>> about the dogs.
>Not sure what you mean with dogs. Tiny dogs were toys for the elite. They
>were not raised by my ancestors, who, AFAIK, were all farmers but for
>one country doctor.
The point is that just as we don't want to have a life like our
ancestors with no modern comforts, and it's a great challenge
simply to survive, we have no reason to think dogs would want
that either even if they were aware of the concept, which they
are not.
>>> And the system is sustainable on the local resources; not reliant on
>>> foreign oil.
>>
>> That's certainly a huge distinction. People didn't need to buy as
>> much, but could get a large percentage of what they need from
>> the land around them. On the negative side: what they could get
>> was much more limitted, and often considerably harder to come by.
>Today, I have broadband, and the UPS/FED-X truck brings whatever I
>ordered. Different strokes- some need the adoration of crowds. Some have
>more robust immune systems that shake off whatever bug is going around.
>Some value the look and feel and smell of the natural world, some want a
>penthouse. But every city would rapidly collapse without the support of
>a rural area, whereas some rural areas could quickly adapt to get by on
>their own resources for an indefinite period.
It seems that way on the surface, but in reality if society as we know
it collapsed, then rural places would soon become killing zones and
battle fields, as would the cities. In rural areas men with the strongest
following of others would take control, having to guard their livestock
and crop fields 24/7 from desperate and starving people...at least until
they all were killed and died off to the point that they were no longer
a constant threat, if that would eventually happen.
>Many post about the fall of Rome. But if you look into it, the emperors
>had not ruled from Rome for over 100 years, and when it fell, it was
>just an empty shell. The smart money had already gotten out of town. I
>look at all the starter castles and McMansions going up in my neck of
>Ozark woods, and havta wonder if it is smart money coming here. I dont
>really have enuf of a statistical database to tell, altho the Census
>bureau has a new class:"X-urb", which is the fastest growing.
>
>Jared Diamond noted how the same investment boom has been going on in
>his area, the Bitterroot valley of Montana. John McCain has 7 houses, I
>bet most are in rural areas. GW Bush bought a ranch in the boonies of
>Paraguay. That's so far, it makes it look like he knows something.
The boonies don't stay boonies when that happens. I watched them
disappear in parts of GA, and my brother is very unhappily watching it
happen in his neck of CO. Eventually humans will have control over
which animals live where in all parts of the world imo, since they already
do in so much of it. That's one reason I believe people should learn to
think of livestock as they do wildlife, and appreciate the fact that some
of them do have decent lives of positive value and a higher percentage
of them could in the future if consumers deliberately try to contribute to
decent lives for livestock with their lifestyle. Of course advocates of
the gross misnomer "animal rights"--better known as eliminationists in
regards to domestic animals--are necessarily opposed to the suggestion
that people learn to appreciate decent lives for livestock. They *want*
people to think about the horrible conditions which produce lives of
negative value, but do *not* want anyone to consider the decent lives
of positive value because doing so suggests that some alternatives
could be ethically equivalent or superior to their elimination objective.
That's an incredibly dishonest approach, as is so much of what they do.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
|
