Solutions

[2010DigitalBoy]

Constantly here on OB we discuss the problems of the world, annunciating our opinions and sharing our experiences. So my question is... what can be done to solve the world's problems? What is your ideal visage of the world?

I won't give an example... because all I can see to help is the eradication of all existance.

[TheResplendent]

[QUOTE=Tical]Constantly here on OB we discuss the problems of the world, annunciating our opinions and sharing our experiences. So my question is... what can be done to solve the world's problems? What is your ideal visage of the world?

I won't give an example... because all I can see to help is the eradication of all existance.[/QUOTE]

I agree. That is the only definite way.

Too many measures would need to be taken, and in which case theres no garauntee any of them would even work because people have minds of their own and everyone is going to want to do their own thing, to try and control every aspect of how people act and what they do is tyrannical, so we wouldn't even be able to begin to try and solve things that way. It's really just a matter of everyone's morals and in what kind of a world they want to make it for their children. This is as it pertains to everything really.

[Charles]

[quote name='Tical']Constantly here on OB we discuss the problems of the world, annunciating our opinions and sharing our experiences. So my question is... what can be done to solve the world's problems? What is your ideal visage of the world?[/quote]

Seeing as how the world cannot have a facial expression, I have no idea what kind of visage would be ideal. But, it's great that people who don't know what "visage" means are going to address this incredibly broad, open-ended question and decide how to solve the world's most pressing issues.

[quote]I won't give an example... because all I can see to help is the eradication of all existance.[/QUOTE]

And--we're off to a great start with the mass genocide of all life!

*gets popcorn, takes a seat, leans back, puts feet up*

[Retribution]

[size=1]Now I don't really want to play the blind idealist here, but...

Well, the world's been getting better as time goes on. People are no longer serfs to corrupt Lords. People are no longer enslaved in America. The world's corruption, while still rampant, is not nearly as widespread as it was say 200 years ago.

As countries become more industrialized (China, for example) the country becomes less and less destitute and more productive. The quality of life goes up with the economy. Right now, a countries with sweatshops are slowly becoming industrialized. While us developed countries profit off their exploitation and they grind away for us, they are progressing, albiet slowly.

There's no clear-cut solutions, but here are some of my opinions:

- End worker exploitation. This means paying people a living wage. This would be extremely complicated, and costs of goods would rise, but it would be the difference between suffering and 'making it'.

- Get other countries more industrialized. I know this is mostly the country's responsibility, but once all countries are industrialized with infastructure and exportable goods, qualilty of life will rise all around the world. Again, this will take a while, possibly hundreds of years.

War will never end. Poverty will never end. Corruption will never end. However, we can seriously limit them. It's not hopeless if you aim to keep improving life for the future. It's hopeless if you aim for perfection.[/size]

[Fyxe]

[size=1][color=slategray]In order to solve problems, people need to work together as one. Since these problems are so large, it would involve the world or a certain country, depending on where the problem is occurring.

Now, considering that humans are practically the definition of imperfection, this cannot be possible. In order to solve all the world's problems, we would have to achieve perfection. It would just never work out correctly.

Even though it would be a breath of fresh air, people have far too many flaws to evolve to perfection. Humans have far too much pride to cooperate, even if there are exceptions.[/color][/size]

[nomad19]

my visage of the world? an angry bald guy with green spots and blue skin :animestun



[QUOTE]I won't give an example... because all I can see to help is the eradication of all existance.[/QUOTE]

it doesn't necessarily have to be the eradication of all life, that's too brutal in my opinion (well it is too brutal) i believe that discipline is the answer, it can make young men and women go to war without a second thought right? So it can surely make a difference in the world. Besides alot of countries have disciplinary issues, maybe martial law is a solution :animedepr

[2010DigitalBoy]

I'm very sorry, I want to apologize for making this thread. I was just really depressed after reading all those sad threads. I don't [I]really[/I] want everyone to die...

also, Charles... at least I know what it means now :animesmil

[Aberinkula]

The world is a great place. War is bad I know. But i think without war and sadness and destruction we can not truly live. we need those thing so we can be together and make peace. As Kharma stats bad=food, and good=bad. I mean that war brings people together when they need to be. Without discord and chaos life is dull.

I'm really trying to put this in a way everyone can understand. If people are happy all the time what good is life. We'ed actually probobly be saying things like: I love that carebare i love you all. Or When people make a difference everything is good. It would actually be creepy.

Speaking of war. End it already G.W! I'm getting sick of it. 3 years n Iraq and about 4 in Afghanastan. Kill Ladan now!!!!

[Ezekiel]

[SIZE=1][QUOTE=Ålpha-Æpsilon]
I'm really trying to put this in a way everyone can understand. If people are happy all the time what good is life. We'ed actually probobly be saying things like: I love that carebare i love you all. Or When people make a difference everything is good. It would actually be creepy.[/QUOTE]

Yes. I'm sure. All those starving children in Africa actually being happy would be a [I]terrifying[/I] thing.

Really, there's nothing we can do about it. But as Retribution briefly said, the world has improved, and quite quickly, I think, when you look at what we used to have.

You want my honest opinion on how to make the world at least marginally better? Okay.

-Stop playing footballers (soccer players, for Americans) so much money. A guy getting paid £100,000 a week is bloody ridiculous! Countries would save countless millions by stopping treating a man who can kick a ball like a celebrity. Olympic athletes have to go it alone, so why not football players, too?

-Stop doing pointless surveys that no doubt cost thousands just to find out how many people sleep on their backs rather than their sides. Or some such.

And there are countless other things. Countries who have money completely waste it, throwing it away on things that are completely useless and will be forgotten in months or years. Why that money can't go toward something a little more meaningful, like helping third-world countries, I'll never know.

On a slight more serious note: If a country donates money to another country (usually African) there is no point whatsoever in giving it to the government. Why? Because they don't care about their people. They buy weapons with the money given for food and medicine. If money is there to be given it needs to go through an organisation that will be there to help.

Sorry for the length, but the world annoys me so much I sometimes have to rant.[/SIZE]

[Charles]

[quote name='Tical']also, Charles... at least I know what it means now :animesmil[/quote]

You know, you're all right. lol

[Fasteriskhead]

Strap yourselves in, folks, this is gonna be a long one.

The difficulty in this question lies in determining what exactly we're looking for. When we talk about the world's problems, and when we talk about solving them, what do we mean? The drift of this thread seems to be going towards fixing individual issues like poverty, warfare, etc., although with a somewhat fatalistic bent. (And no, I'm not going to propose immediate solutions to these things - I know a little about economics and international politics, but I'm an amateur at best)

Well, don't ask me to dig up a reference at the moment, but a few months ago there was a UN report that warfare of all types had gone down globally in all areas except for terrorism over the past several years. This means that today we live in a comparably safer world than we did, say, a decade ago. This is not because of some whim of history: this happened because the UN and countless other international regulatory organizations finally began to get to work. The results are an extraordinary testament to human ingenuity. This evidence alone seems to indicate that, to a [i]certain[/i] degree and over a large span of time, we can in fact "fix" the world to some extent.

But there's always that "to some extent," which comes through very strongly in the rest of the posts to this thread (well, from some of the folks not proposing martial law). Retri puts this quite well: "War will never end. Poverty will never end. Corruption will never end. However, we can seriously limit them. It's not hopeless if you aim to keep improving life for the future. It's hopeless if you aim for perfection." I think this is also what Tical is getting at, and which is making him "really depressed": we may be able to reduce and cordon in war, poverty, etc. with increasing [i]efficiency[/i], but this does not get rid of them. At best we reduce them to "acceptable" levels. Even were we to accomplish the almost superhuman feat of getting everyone in the world above poverty level (well, whatever arbitrary line we set for said level), we still wouldn't have eliminated inequality nor unhappiness stemming from that inequality. At best we might calculate and secure a best possible "balance."

But are we done, now that we've said that we can't really "fix" the world but can only improve it in a relative sense? Not even a little bit - it's more likely we haven't even found the real issue yet. Is the goal of all this, really, to make sure that people don't fight or that people reach a certain income every year? No; if I understand everyone in the rest of the thread, these are basically just indicators of something else, which I mentioned above as [i]happiness[/i]. This word isn't to be understood lightly - there's miles' worth of literature spanning more than three centuries about what "happiness" means, but for right now let's define it as "satisfaction with life" (although what that means is almost as unclear). In any case, if we want to eliminate war and poverty, we want to do it because it makes people unhappy. When we talk about "fixing" the world, or "changing" it, we're really talking about gaining a basic kind of happiness for all. However: what remains to be asked here is whether happiness in the widest sense is something that can really be calculated and secured by us (as the utilitarians, and the recent "happiness" turn in psychology, would want).

I personally doubt this - everything I know runs against it. Happiness as we mean it here isn't a kind of "mood" that we can be in or out of. It is directly connected with [i]who we are[/i] and how we interact with things in the world - or, to sum up, how we [i]think[/i]. If we can effect this at all, we can only do so in unpredictable and usually superficial ways. We don't change the way we think, it changes us, and this is something we misunderstand at our own peril. Does this mean that we just sit around, waiting for "happiness" to come? No. We can't just "will" a change in our thinking to happen, but we can prepare the way. This means, above all else, to think into our present thinking, i.e. the world, in order to understand where we are [i]now[/i] and try to get a grip on why we're so unhappy.

I think Heidegger puts this much better than I do, so I defer to him:

[quote name='Heidegger][SIZE=1]I know of no path toward a direct change of the present state of the world, assuming that such a change is at all humanly possible. But it seems to me that the attempted thinking could awaken, clarify, and fortify the readiness [of expectation'].... It is not a matter of simply waiting until something occurs to human beings after three hundred years have gone by; it is about thinking ahead, without prophetic claims, into the coming time from the standpoint of the fundamental characteristics of the present age, which have hardly been thought through. Thinking is not inactivity, but in itself the action that has a dialogue with the world?s destiny. It seems to me that the distinction, stemming from metaphysics, made between theory and praxis, and the conception of a transmission between the two, obstructs the path toward insight into what I understand to be thinking.[/quote][/SIZE]

[Lady Knight]

I'm going to bring up the issue of global warming. Now before all of you go pointing fingers at me and start calling me an environmental freak, tree hugger etc. I want you to watch this preview for this flim [U]An Inconvenient Truth[/U] click below

[URL]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2078944470709189270&q=an+inconvenient+truth&pl=true[/URL]

I don't mean to advertise this movie but the preview has a lot of valuable facts in there. Imagine in about 50 years was the time predicted in the movie(I saw it) there could be more then 100 millon refugees because part of Greenland melted causing the sea level to rise. So I agree that there are many problems in this world at the current moment but one problem many people in North America are turning away from is global warming. People global warming is here and it isn't going to go away unless we start to do something about it.

So some helpful little solutions to help prevent global warming from occuring is try to walk instead of drive or take the subway if your city has one. Don't waste electricity when your not using your computer shut it dow don't leave it running. Just small things like that could help prevent global warming from getting worse. If everyone in North America was a bit more concious(sp?) of the environment then we could help prevent global warming from doing more damage to our world. I also recommend going to see the movie because it will make you even more aware of the problem. I could say more but I think I'll end it here.

[Aberinkula]

Ezekial,
[QUOTE]Yes. I'm sure. All those starving children in Africa actually being happy would be a terrifying thing[/QUOTE]

Didn't mean it like that. But feed them already. Why doesn't the government just create a ray gun to make food bigger. And I'm not kidding.

And global warming probobly won't cause mass hysteria in this generation. If it does happen it will probobly happen when most of us die.

HEaring a news advertisenment it mentioned and I quite,

Getting warmed up to the new weather patterns? Well get used to it. Studies show of permanent weather changes in the climate. It might not be global worming. It could just be NATURE not human resources.

[Farto the Magic]

[FONT=Trebuchet MS][COLOR=DarkGreen]Ecstasy for everyone? Regardless, wouldn't destroying all life defeat the purpose of making life better? In my experience, civilization causes negative feelings. I went to Canada and hung out by a waterfall in the middle of the woods for about a week. I've never felt better in my entire life. I think people need to get back to nature. I'm not thinking that we need to live like animals, but I don't like industrialization. Shortly after that, I spent the day in a nearby city. I was going nuts. There was so much stimulation and everything was shaped. Even the bushes were shaped. It drove me crazy. I think that humanity has to learn to integrate with the natural world, rather than fight and exploit it. Cities make life easier, but not better.

By the way, I do believe the origin of the ice age had nothing to do with man's influence.[/COLOR][/FONT]

[Lady Knight]

[QUOTE=Ålpha-Æpsilon]
And global warming probobly won't cause mass hysteria in this generation. If it does happen it will probobly happen when most of us die.

HEaring a news advertisenment it mentioned and I quite,

Getting warmed up to the new weather patterns? Well get used to it. Studies show of permanent weather changes in the climate. It might not be global warming. It could just be NATURE not human resources.[/QUOTE]

Studies also show that it is not just NATURE but also US who are causing global warming. Science has proven through studies over the past 350k years( I think its that many...they had a chart in the video that went back over 300k years) that its our generation and our parents generation who have contributed most to global warming.

Also in 50 years the predicted time when the Artic and Greenland will melt drastically causing the water level to rise up to 20 feet I will be 65 years old. A lot of the people posting right now on the Otakuboards will still be alive.

So guess what its not just nature its also us so like many North Americans your choosing the we'll be dead when it happens so lets just leave our children to clean up the mess we made of our world it'll be their problem solution.For heavens sake if you could do something about it try to! I'm not saying become superman and save the world from global warming because its true...many people will turn a blind eye being the stubborn human race that we are. But if some people try to make a little bit of an effort then maybe...maybe our world has a chance. Sorry to lash out at you like that but it fustrats me when people turn a blind eye because its an inconevient truth(I love the title of the movie!) to acknowledge.

[2010DigitalBoy]

[quote name='Charles']You know, you're all right. lol[/quote]

:animesmil I'm honored

Anywho, I wanted to bring about this: The United States prolly could save most of the world. Here, let me qupte song lyrics instead... yes it serves to prove that I have no mind of my own and only follow the words of others, but the words are true.

[Quote=System Of A Down - Boom]4,000 hungry children
Leave us per hour from starvation
While billions are spent on bombs
Creating death shower [/Quote]

You may say that there's nothing we can do, but hold the gravity of this statement in your hands and tell me you can't think of something!!!

[Farto the Magic]

[FONT=Trebuchet MS][COLOR=DarkGreen]Ok, if nature is causing global warming, in addition to us, there is no way in hell we're going to reverse it. We haven't made a weather-controlling machine yet, so we might as well let nature take its course. As for the 20 feet of water thing? We'll just build levees (sp?) and dikes higher. And some people's beach houses will get taken. All-in-all, its not too big of an issue...mostly because its damage will be minimal and we can't have a solution.

But I digress. I think the reason why the children are hungry was posted earlier. The governments of the poor countries use the money to buy weapons...which is why we should use the money the buy base foods (like rice) and give it to them. Buy weapons with rice. I dare you. Regardless though, I think the U.S. puts more emphasis on protecting our people than on giving other people in the world the basic necessities of life.

That's how it goes.[/COLOR][/FONT]

[MomochiZabuza]

[COLOR=DarkOrange][SIZE=1][FONT=Verdana]Well some people think that we could save more people if we just gave more money, but that would mean we need more money, right?

So I have a couple questions about money.

Q. Is the world making more money?

I know that if we make more money, then the value of money is [B]supposed[/B] to go down, right? But people use money, and we continue to make more people. (Make as in give birth to), and so if the amount of money stays the same, and the value or money stays the same, but the amount of people goes up, wouldn't the value of people go down? Since there is less money for each person to use? (Not that the value of a person can be measured in money, but the necessities required for a person to live that requires money)

But then again I don't know what is happening with money and the world so I was just wondering.[/FONT][/SIZE][/COLOR]

[Aberinkula]

If global warming is affecting us then why in't t affecting more than small parts of the US. Soon people are going to say breathing CO2 is afectting the atmossphere.
Apocylyps. It was supposodly supposed to happen last year but no. So GB will probobly appen to kill us by accident in te year 4000! People have been fearing about global death for decades. So if people would just shut up about World wide death all of us would live life a little more peacfully. I myself beleive everything about GB or apocylyps. I only believe it can happen.

We are indeed an inferior race. Hell animals setle things faster than us. But one thing all of us should agree on is that THIS will all end THAT t will all end WE will all end. It's kinda the universal truth.

And don't get me started on the Government. The US is not all that Free as we think. And for god sake please use your money for greater things. There are lots of people withrering away of hunger of poorness. And weopons aren't all thats avalible. Invest in bigger and better things. Money = Greed = Hatred = War= Death, and then Death = more Money. Won't that start again.

And if that's god's plan. Why is he making this happen. Anyone have an answer?

[KatanaViolet]

[SIZE=1]I'm very opinionated when it comes to these sorts of issues.
I've agreed and clashed with many other OBer's opinions as well.
But just because I have strong opinions doesn't mean I know the solutions any more than anyone else.
I can say things that we need to find solutions to, that I know are entirely possible:
- Energy consumption (which segues into the ever-so-real global warming issue)
- World Trade
- Issues with the Middle East (maybe it's a little idealistic, but I know that something can be done...its just a matter of what)

I think it's hard though because solutions are always being thrown around.
I'm think I could pretty much be classified as a pacifist when it comes to issues of the Middle East and Nuclear Programs and all that stuff. I hate the whole idea of war.
I've heard it said before that if there wasn't nuclear and non-nuclear bombs or guns then there wouldn't be wars. I disagree with that. If we got rid of every weapon in the world, I still think there would be violence. It was like that thousands of years ago before there were those types of weapons, and we look at the people of those eras like they are savages, when in reality, the only difference between then and now is the means by which we kill people.

The way I see it (as idealist as it may sound) is that if we, as a race, don't get our **** (pardon my French) together, we're in trouble. We're all on this planet, and we need to work at the issues that affect us as a people. We have so much information and technology at our disposal, we are more intelligent then we were 100 years ago, if we don't put it to use, how are we going to evolve? It really is survival of the fittest, and I'm starting to believe that the human race is starting to fall behind.[/SIZE]

[Guest Mythology]

My way of solving problems is for world leaders to quite thinking of it and try to help out others with out there own personal gain and just try to be good people for ounce.

[DeathKnight]

[quote name='Retribution][size=1']Now I don't really want to play the blind idealist here, but...[/quote][/size]

[color=crimson]No Retri! Don't do it![/color]

[quote name='Retribution][size=1']As countries become more industrialized (China, for example) the country becomes less and less destitute and more productive. The quality of life goes up with the economy[/quote]

[color=crimson]Well..

As China industrializes dissent has risen due to a rapidly deepening rich-poor divide which is going to be a big headache to even out due to it's sheer size in population and land area. In rural areas there have been violent demonstrations against industry to the point that a couple of dozen demonstrators were killed by police.

Pollution has also ballooned due to industrialization. Addressing 'quality of life', air quality has taken a heavy toll all across Eastern China from it's industrialization which, obviously, creates an unhealthy environment for the common person to live in. The majority of China's cities are considered "polluted" and cancer/disease caused by the air pollution is one of the main causes of death in China. Most of China's rivers are also heavily polluted, 80 percent of them if I recall correctly.

So you solve a few problems while unleashing several others. It's unfortunate but that's reality.[/color]

[quote name='Ålpha-Æpsilon']War is bad I know.[/quote]

[color=crimson][i]No[/i], it isn't. War is one of our fortes, it's something humans do [i]well[/i]. It's an art, it's something you practice and perform, something you dedicate yourself into learning. War brings advancement, it forces change, it forces progress.

Controlled violence is one of the most potent forces humans have at their command.[/color]

[quote name='Fasteriskhead']Strap yourselves in, folks, this is gonna be a long one.[/quote]

[color=crimson]No Faster! Don't do it![/color]

[quote name='Ålpha-Æpsilon']It might not be global worming. It could just be NATURE not human resources.[/quote]

[color=crimson].... No, it IS being heavily influenced by human industry, lol. Nature has been raped over the past few centuries by humans, there can be no doubt about that.[/color]

[KatanaViolet]

[SIZE=1]I remember learning in Astronomy class (of all places) about global warming and how it might not just be humanly cause (although we play a massive part), but every millenia or so the earth goes through it's phases of hotter/colder weather.
We play such a role because of all the industrialization and pollution we create, but it's not JUST us.
Take for example, Venus (and I'm hoping I'm not getting too off topic here). Venus, in theory, was very similar to Earth in the early years of the solar system, in terms of size, density, and composition. Ergo, it is believed that at one time their atmospheres where very much alike.
We are all familiar with the term "greenhouse effect" are we not?
Well, scientists theorize that what happened to Venus was a Runaway Greenhouse Effect.
Which is...

[QUOTE=http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/venus/greenhouse.html][SIZE=1]The greenhouse effect occurs for all planetary atmospheres containing greenhouse gases, and is responsible for their being warmer than would be the case otherwise. The greenhouse effect by itself could not account for the conditions that we find on Venus. However, under certain conditions we believe the greenhouse effect can "run away". For example, consider the case of a planet like the Earth. The Earth has enormous amounts of two greenhouse gases: water vapor and carbon dioxide. However, for the Earth most of the water and carbon dioxide are not in the atmosphere. The water is mostly in the oceans, and the carbon dioxide is mostly bound chemically in rocks made from compounds that chemists call carbonates (i.e, limestone).
Now suppose we increased the effectiveness of greenhouse heating of the Earth's atmosphere, for example by increasing the amount of solar radiation falling on it, or by increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (for example, by burning fossil fuels, which produce water vapor and carbon dioxide as byproducts of burning). We would then expect the temperature to rise in the atmosphere (assuming no other effects intervened---a big "if" in the realistic case since the atmosphere is complicated). This would be a greenhouse effect. [/SIZE] [/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/venus/greenhouse.html][SIZE=1]It would become a runaway greenhouse effect if the rising temperature approached the boiling point of water, because then the oceans would begin to convert to water vapor, the water vapor would increase the effectiveness of heat trapping and accelerate the greenhouse effect, this would cause the temperature to rise further, thus causing the oceans to evaporate faster, etc., etc. (This type of runaway is also called a "positive feedback loop".) When the oceans were gone the atmosphere would finally stabilize at a much higher temperature and at much higher density, because all the water would now be in the atmosphere

We can envision even a further runaway stage in this scenario. Suppose the preceding runaway raised the temperature so high that chemical reactions begin to occur that drive the carbon dioxide from the rocks into the atmosphere (the process is called sublimation; a few hundred degrees Celsius would be sufficient). Then another runaway would occur as the carbon dioxide feeding into the atmosphere would accelerate the heating, which would in turn accelerate the transfer of carbon dioxide from the rocks to the atmosphere.

The atmosphere would finally stablilize at a still higher temperature and pressure after all the carbon dioxide had been driven from the rocks. In fact, we believe that if this sequence were to take place on the Earth, the resulting temperature and pressure of the atmosphere left behind would not be very different from that for present-day Venus: the atmospheric termperature would be hundreds of degrees Celsius and the pressure would be maybe 100 times greater than it is today.
Thus, we believe that in the case of Venus the initial solar heating kept oceans from forming, or kept them from staying around if they did form, and the subsequent lack of rainfall and failure of plant life to evolve kept the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rather than binding it in the rocks as is the case for the Earth; thus, Venus has an environmental disaster for an atmosphere.

The sobering warning for us is obvious: we have to be extremely concerned about processes such as burning of fossil fuels in large volumes that might (we don't know for sure because the scientific questions are complex) have the potential to trigger a runaway greenhouse effect and produce on the Earth atmospheric conditions such as those found on Venus[/SIZE][/QUOTE]

However, it is hard to explain something that happened billions of years ago, but I do believe that these theories do prove to be rather relevant and entirely possible. Unless there was life on Venus back then, chances are that it was a natural occurance. Think of how much we must be speeding up the process.

Now, if anyone can think of a solution to that! Let me know.
This is just one of the more wide-scale global problems...
Not everyone is affected by war (unless perhaps, if it's World War), but this is something that can affect every single living being on this planet, doesn't matter what race, language, nationality or religion you call your own.[/SIZE]

[Aberinkula]

[QUOTE][color=crimson][i]No[/i], it isn't. War is one of our fortes, it's something humans do [i]well[/i]. It's an art, it's something you practice and perform, something you dedicate yourself into learning. War brings advancement, it forces change, it forces progress.

Controlled violence is one of the most potent forces humans have at their command.[/color][/QUOTE]


Thank you Deathknight. Thats the answer I needed.