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GameRager: I know....
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KOCollins: Knowledge is power! :D
Yup...GI JOEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Also porkchop sammiches...yum.
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KOCollins: Knowledge is power! :D
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GameRager: Yup...GI JOEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Also porkchop sammiches...yum.
Don't get too excited, now. Its only half the battle.
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Tulivu: Don't get too excited, now. Its only half the battle.
We lost the other half when Macho Man died.
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Demut: What about the mindset? Take the Aboriginal people of Australia. They have respect for nature and think that even trees and rocks should remain as untouched as possible. Where do we find that kind of thinking in contemporary major societies? In some social eco-movement niche at best.
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crazy_dave: Actually Aboriginals have been in Australia for just shy of 50,000 years and they may have caused mass extinctions when they arrived there too though it is in dispute over exactly when or why those extinctions happened. So while now everything looks to be in equilibrium, but it almost certainly wasn't when they first got there and expanded.

Eventually our own peoples will reach some equilibrium and you do see some evidence of prominence for respect the Earth coming into the social consciousness - perhaps often not a lot from the conservative political spectrum though even there it is not absent. In fact "being green" has become quite a selling point these days. I would say that Environmentalism as a whole is no longer a fringe movement and is quite mainstream.
This really is an important point.

I will be the first to argue against the exploitation of one society by another, but a nostalgic imagining of past societies is not accurate, as crazy_dave mentions, the Australian Aboriginies are well known by current fields of research as causing environmental damage on a massive scale when they first arrived, not only the extinction of animal species but of entire ecosystems - which is why so much australian flora survives fires now, they're just the only things that are left, ie, survivor bias, as nondeplumage's post. This is also true on a general level with many, many more civilizations annhilating themselves than surviving. Take into account that the australian aborigines spear people to death when dealing with tribal law, and this still happens today in tribal societies in the Northern Territory, and I don't think they seem as utopian as we would like to imagine.

The point is we can't just dream of a beautiful past to return to, we have to make it happen, work towards a better future.

This said, there are countless problems with societies of today, I agree with that sentiment completely.

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Demut: Exactly. USED to be. But in order for advanced societies to emerge it takes millions and millions of years.
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nondeplumage: Mars used to be like Earth for longer than Earth.
This too is also a very important point. The chances of running into other life within the time-frame of the existence of human civilsation may be infinitesimally small, but that is only because of our own limited breath of existence.


Shakespeare - Macbeth

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
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brother-eros: I will be the first to argue against the exploitation of one society by another...
Exploitation is an easy word to throw around; it's appropriate some places, but should be applied with a very careful stroke.
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brother-eros: Shakespeare - Macbeth

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Hey, I remember that from class. Still, I’ll have to disagree with Mr. S. on this one.