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243 comments on DrumBeat: December 23, 2007

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BillJames on December 23, 2007 - 10:42am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Here is a quote from Thomas Edison from 1910:

"Sunshine is spread out thin and so is electricity. Perhaps they are the same, Sunshine is a form of energy, and the winds and the tides are manifestations of energy.”

“Do we use them? Oh, no! We burn up wood and coal, as renters burn up the front fence for fuel. We live like squatters, not as if we owned the property.

“There must surely come a time when heat and power will be stored in unlimited quantities in every community, all gathered by natural forces. Electricity ought to be as cheap as oxygen...."

If we are clever enough, we can store and use solar effectively. Almost everything else on earth lives within a solar budget. Are we so unclever that we cannot?

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NeverLNG on December 23, 2007 - 12:09pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

We are certainly clever enough -- at least, individually and in small groups. The problem comes in the group dynamics of human behavior, when brilliant minds turn to mush.

I used to ponder, and wonder how the German people (I have a German heritage and a lot of German friends) could have been so stupid as to allow the rise of the National Socialists. Then we "elected" a modern version in the U.S. -- and the remarkable thing is that the contagion is spreading, even apparently on the European Continent where hardly two generations ago a vastly ruinous war (or suite of wars) nearly destroyed Western civilization.

Elias Canetti, a Nobel Prize winning author, investigated this in Crowds and Power. Now, finally, it makes sense to me. But the question in my mind has changed -- is it possible to develop a leadership that doesn't become tyrannical over time?

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step back on December 23, 2007 - 4:30pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

-- is it possible to develop a leadership that doesn't become tyrannical over time?

Let's flip it around:

Is it possible to develop a followship that does not fall for the mind bending tricks of a group of wanna-be tyrants?

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redcoltken on December 23, 2007 - 7:16pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Yes and no - we can create a group of people who can maintain a clarity of mind. But teaching other generations to have a core of values but be flexible considering a generations unique circumstances - thats very hard.

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CalGuy on December 30, 2007 - 4:43pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The Jeffersonian principle of an educated electorate falls apart when politicians appeal to emotions like fear. Even the brightest people fall victim to fear and can make some bad decisions as a result.

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NeverLNG on December 23, 2007 - 8:24pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Well, it hasn't happened yet. But there is always that greatest narcotic of all -- hope.

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jrwakefield on December 23, 2007 - 12:29pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

If we are clever enough, we can store and use solar effectively. Almost everything else on earth lives within a solar budget. Are we so unclever that we cannot?

It has nothing to do with being clever or not. All other species indeed lives within their solar budget, until their population gets too large. Then it must crash.

The big question is, are we beyond our carrying capactiy with our current population? The general feeling is we are way past that and the only way of our society to survive is to have a huge reduction, more than 50%, in population. Question is how do we get there?

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step back on December 23, 2007 - 4:40pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

If we are clever enough, we can store and use solar effectively.

Problem is, we are more "clever" than that.

We are so clever we have fabricated a fictitious method of accounting for our cleverness which we call "economics". We are so clever we have fooled ourselves into believing that the laws of our man-made "economics" trumps the laws of nature.

So yes. If we were less clever, we could devise systems for collecting and storing useful energy that originates as solar energy. But we are more clever than that. We paralyze ourselves with our cleverness into fretting over whether it will be "economical" to develop such solar based systems and to stop freebasing off the high EROI of Natured produced oil.

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CalGuy on December 30, 2007 - 4:47pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

We were so clever that we created nuclear power and it was suppose to be so cheap we would not have to meter it. So much for that clever move.

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243 comments on DrumBeat: December 23, 2007

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