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coberst Offline OP
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Is more technology the answer?

Technology is a positive feed back system. When the output of the system increases the system goes at a higher rate. There is no equilibrium in a positive feedback system. Capitalism is such a system.

In a negative feed back system when the output increases the system goes at a slower pace or turns off completely, like the thermostatically controlled home heating furnace. Such a system seeks and maintains equilibrium. Our body is such a system.

As our world population continues to increase we (humanity) face a big question: How will we feed everybody? Until lately, India thought that they had found the answer for creating cheap food for their hundreds of millions.

“Farmers in the state of Punjab abandoned traditional farming methods in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the national program called the "Green Revolution," backed by advisers from the U.S. and other countries.

Indian farmers started growing crops the American way — with chemicals, high-yield seeds and irrigation.

Since then, India has gone from importing grain like a beggar, to often exporting it.

But studies show the Green Revolution is heading for collapse.”

When he Green Revolution was launched 40 years ago framers began to grow only high-yield crops instead of their traditional crops. The new crops required more water than the old crops so that farmers were required to create new wells. These new wells caused the ground water level to fall and the declining level caused the water to become more salty than before. These new wells required better and more expensive pumps, which led to indebtedness by the farmers.

This led to a problem similar to the problem we in the US have recently experienced, i.e. India’s Wall Street equivalent grew fat and happy and farmers accumulated debts that they could not pay. This created a financial “quicksand”.

The new crops demanded much more from the soil and the water wells pumped more salty water because of lowered ground water and the combination destroyed the soil.

During the good years the farmers increased their standard of living and built new homes for their families, thus adding more debt.

"It's like a disease that is catching on in the world," says Suba, "building a life that is like a house of cards."

"The state and farmers are now faced with a crisis…India's population is growing faster than any country on Earth, and domestic food production is vital.

But the commission's director, G.S. Kalkat, says Punjab's farmers are committing ecological and economic "suicide”… Kalkat says only one thing can save Punjab: India has to launch a brand new Green Revolution. But he says this one has to be sustainable.

The problem is, nobody has yet perfected a farming system that produces high yields, makes a good living for farm families, protects and enhances the environment — and still produces good, affordable food.”

India's Farming 'Revolution' Heading For Collapse
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102944731

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We come up with something and immediately try to get it to market and make money from it regardless of potential consequences later. The view of many modern capitalists is that this is the only moral way to conduct human affairs.

It's a matter of extreme conviction, buttressed perhaps with loads of examples, that governments aren't smart enough to "look at the big picture." And even if they could look at the big picture, it's just immoral to try to influence it - you have to let individuals do as they wish.

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I think India is suffering from the effects of too much technology. We're exporting our way of farming which in most countries is unsustainable. How about we study the system which we replaced and see if there aren't sustainable methods that could be used to produce food crops?


If you don't care for reality, just wait a while; another will be along shortly. --A Rose

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According to current population forecasts, population aging in the first half of this century should exceed that of the second half of the 20th century. For the world as a whole, the elderly will grow from 6.9% of the population in 2000 to a projected 19.3% in 2050 (Table 1). In other words, the world average should then be higher than the current world record

http://longevity-science.org/Population_Aging.htm

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Yes. Technology is part of the answer, but also we need a new kind of technology that makes use of our understanding of ourselves, our capacities and limitations, our natural and our institutions.

There are thinkers, doers, and by-standers. Everyone's a by-stander in someone else's problem space. Thinkers are often so abstracted from the problem that they cannot see how the complexities of the problem-space make their solutions ineffective or counter-productive. Doers know how to make things work. The problem is we sometimes make things work when they really need to be redesigned. At best we waste a lot of effort; at worst, we just dig bigger holes for ourselves. But redesign requires someone to step back and think.

It is a rare person who is both a thinker and a doer. Best if we can leverage the thinkers and the doers together. Unfortunately, an added "complexity" of solving complex problems is the sheer magnitude of effort required - planning, manpower, budget, technology development, testing (and I could probably list 20 other things here). Projects - attempted solutions - acquire momentum, people who need to talk to each other don't. The right people are ignored, as if we get to vote on the laws of physics. You have policy-makers taking technical advice from bean counters and entrepreneurs over engineers and scientists, or taking the advice of engineers regarding items best left to a scientist, or vice versa.

Momentum - even metaphorical momentum - is a powerful thing. Once people invest in something, there's a lot of resistance to starting from scratch.

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Originally Posted By: Amaranth Rose II
I think India is suffering from the effects of too much technology. ...


We need to ask: what qualifies as a technology?

As I asked in another thread: Does hypnotherapy qualify as a technology?

Over the years--in cooperation with others in the healing arts and sciences--I have used a spiritual form of it to help people, including myself, family and friends, deal with with problems like smoking, weight problems, other serious addictions, including physical, mental and spiritual pain, obsessive-compulsive and self-destructive behaviour, anorexia, phobias and the like.

I have discovered through experience that some painful conditions are strictly physical, or somatic--the lack of food, clothing and shelter; some come to us because of the mental stresses laid on us by circumstances, or because of what others do to us. These we now call psychosomatic diseases--the mind/body factor

However, there are conditions which we bring on ourselves, by the choices we make. I callthese conditions: pneuma-psychosomatic--the spirit, mind and body factor.

PNEUMATHERAPY
To avoid the hocus pocus often associated with hypnosis I prefer to call what I do, pneumatherapy--helping people to take personal responsibility for, and control over, their own lives without putting too much reliance on drugs and surgery--medical technologies. Some people are their own worst enemies. Pneumatherapy can help us sort this out.


G~O~D--Now & ForeverIS:Nature, Nurture & PNEUMA-ture, Thanks to Warren Farr&ME AT www.unitheist.org

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