Thank you, Gentlemen (Paul and George), for the most realistic discussion I have yet to read on Cif. You really got down to the nitty-gritty of just how dire our situation is, which few others seem to recognise, or want to face up to.

However, you both lack the one perspective which could bring you together, providing the key to understanding (and with it, the potential for resolving) this whole issue, but which massive taboos keep you too, like most others, from recognising.

What I'm referring to is a human-evolutionary, i.e. Darwinian, perspective and understanding of our own human nature and the social, political, economic and military power structures of our civilisation it has given rise to.

Perhaps it would help overcome them, if I pointed out where some of these powerful taboos come form.

One particularly powerful taboo is an understandable but misconceived overreaction to the horrors of Nazism, which embraced a misconceived form of Darwinism as rationalization of its brutal political philosophy, giving rise to the exact, but equally extreme, opposite political philosophy, which is now dominant and forbids applying Darwin's ideas to human society at all. Academics are terrified of going anywhere near it, because they know that they will be slandered, condemned or dismissed, if they do.

Another powerful taboo has been (hard?)-wired into our brains by evolution, which adapted them to <i>interpret</i> reality (the environment) to their own blind, now (in the artificial environment of human society itself) perversely, Darwinian advantage, which, for those in positions of power and/or privileged, generally boils down to maintaining the socioeconomic status quo.

 

2nd Post

 

"As for saving the planet – what we are really trying to save . .  is not the planet but our attachment to the western material culture, which we cannot imagine living without."

". . psychopaths seem to be running the show already, and millions are suffering today from starvation and war . ."

Bang on, Paul, both times . . !

 

"We still believe that we will be able to continue living more or less the same comfortable lives, . .  if we can only embrace "sustainable development" rapidly enough . . and extend it to the extra 3 billion people who will shortly join us on this already gasping planet."