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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stalker0" data-source="post: 8724075" data-attributes="member: 5889">PowerThe issue with superweapons is it allows an individual greater ability to inflict harm on the masses. There are always "fringe" or "extreme" elements of any society, that believe things woefully different than that society's core. There are for example people on this planet today that would love nothing more to wipe out the entire species.Back in the day of swords....well they couldn't do too much damage. Today with super plagues and nuclear weapons, should such a group or individual obtain those weapons, the damage they can do is astronomical.That is the real societal question when it comes to power. Its not about how to have the middle control such power responsibility, that is "relatively easy" in the grand scope (its not easy, but in comparison), it's how do you control or contain the extremes in your society when access to such power is always a risk?GreedWhile power is a bigger question of the fringe, greed is something that infects us right down the middle. The climate crisis today is a symptom of a bigger general problem.... exponential growth. Every modern system today relies on it, systems that do not grow collapse. Yet it is simple to show mathematically that such growth is absolutely not sustainable. There is a wonderful article here that outlines it: <a href="https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/" target="_blank">Galactic-Scale Energy | Do the Math</a>. The TLDR, even at a modest growth rate of 2.3% (which is low by today's standards), we will be consuming the ENTIRE GALAXY's energy output in a meer 2400 years. And of course, earth will have been completely sucked dry long before that.The big societal question is whether we can materially "ever have enough". Can we craft a lifestyle that is simply "good enough" and allow everyone in the world to enjoy it? That is the crazier question that Star Trek and Orville push, far crazier than laser guns and subspace communications. Can we as a species fundamentally change our drives?At the end of the day we have three paths we could follow:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Live in a system that constantly grows and then collapses back down. You might assume this is the scenario we live in today, but we control the collapses in our economies well enough that we are more on path 2. A true path 1 scenario would be collapses so great we effectively reset civilization and "start again", which gives earth time to heal and replenish so we can do it all over again.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Consume all resources and enter a permanent state of collapse. This is the current path we are on, the direction is very clear, its just a question of how fast we run out of gas.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Build a steady state economy that does not require growth. This is a huge shift, and would likely be a lifestyle most of us would have trouble reconciling with, for it would be a very different state of being.</li> </ul></blockquote>

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