Give peace a chance ? Let's institute an empire!

Humanism
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In the life of Brian: “What have the Roman’s ever done for us?”

After some game of question and answers :

“All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”

“Brought peace.”

“Oh. Peace? Shut up!”

[What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us? - YouTube]

I am not sure that the Roman empire brought everything listed, or rather i am sure he did not.

Some he also did in its own interest, as the roads.

But it brought public order and peace.

Under peaces of empires, people, religions and so live together and must tolerate each others.

And necessary decisions can be taken and implemented.

I know that the rule of empires is harsh and that empires work for the powerful and the rich.

I know that they tend to degenerate, either in states of anarchy, either in dictatorships.

But given the present world, the needs to take harsh decisions to fight the climate change effects, why not an empire, with some guarantees ?

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Guarantees of what rights? Freedom of speech? Freedom of movement?

Nobody say that dictatorship doesn’t work. It is the the price the people pay in personal freedoms.

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Which is different from what we have? How?

I know it’s supposed to be a place where people have power, and it’s better than most other times in history, but even the emperor would say he’s doing things for the good of the people, so, that’s just kinda how things work. If we could just stop fighting with each other (I mean the non-rich, fighting over the scraps we get), now that would be something.

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Freedom, democracy and the fight against authoritarian rule. Hmmmm.

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Devil is in the details.

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Trump guaranteed to make the US great again. (MAGA).

Need I say more?

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That’s the part we’re missing.

My lifelong mantra has been “To each his own”

“Free to be You and Me” came out when I was a kid. Apparently not everybody got the message.

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Climate change is a class issue.

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Yes it is also !!! But not only …

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Class issue

1 Like
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The U.S. is not France and the environmentalists in the U.S. are not French, but rather U.S. citizens, so I don’t know why you are posting about French protestors.

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Worst ever drought in Europe. Last week, France forced its nuclear power plants, which produce 70 percent of its electricity, to operate at reduced capacity: releasing high-temperature coolant water into rivers that are at record low levels is an ecological hazard. Amid the ongoing energy crisis, however, the French energy agency now has ordered the plants to return to full capacity, whatever the resulting damage to the environment, including plant and animal life. Of France’s 96 mainland departments, 86 are on drought alert. The Loire River, France’s second-largest, can be crossed on foot along much of its length.

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This is fully exact, as far as I know, except the part about the return to full capacity. 5 plants got a special authorization, not to return to full capacity, but to go slightly beyond the norms .

In fact, for instance, the 4 power plants on the Loire, can go on as the refrigerating system use much less water and warms it very slightly, but water is still needed !

[Sécheresse : les centrales nucléaires à l'épreuve du réchauffement climatique]

[La centrale nucléaire de Belleville-sur-Loire va-t-elle fermer à cause de la sécheresse ?]

Environmentalists disagree.

The matter is that the French government is in a catch22, politically and ecologically, from its own making.

An fact which gives a point to the idea of a supra national authority.

Another point: Migrants !

In West countries people wince to be polite, against migrants.

With the climate change, large parts of Africa, India, and so could become unlivable, while north Canada and Siberia open. .

It means hundred of millions of people to displace and to integrate in other countries, with all the problems it implies.

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I agree. It will be migration from uninhabitable regions that will cause a major world population crisis.

It seems that Prof. Albert Bartlett (RIP) was correct in his prediction that with overpopulation or over-use of resources the people will need to curb one or both or Nature will do it for them.

This video is an absolute must for anybody that is concerned and wants to know how and why this is happening. It is called the Exponential Function!

and if that is not quite clear enough, You may want to watch this classic that predicts which species will survive the anthropogenic extinction event that is currently forming and is called the Sixth Extinction event.

https://populationmatters.org/welcome-anthropocene?gclid=Cj0KCQjw3eeXBhD7ARIsAHjssr_Ho2sDWUBcG3btzpcQhohWXwn0lUrYObUHrdE9iItU6IwK_bL_ICAaAobbEALw_wcB

This is what’s awaiting mankind.

Ever heard of Covid and MonkeyPox? As population density increases in habitable areas so will other critters and they don’t care about civilization. They care only about survival.

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Interesting twist on this I heard today on the Making Sense Podcast with Will MacAskill. According to this, the attribution to John Stuart Mill is correct

What has posterity ever done for us?

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/05/09/posterity-ever/

It was around the last half hour or so, where they were considering what values we need to maintain to preserve something like the culture we have, while also knowing that we are most likely maintaining some wrong headed values. We still haven’t really shaken off slavery, so what else are we doing that is antithetical to the happiness of others.

How much should we consider the needs and desires of those yet unborn? Seems like a lot of people think it’s fine to use up all the resources we have and let those future people figure out the problems we leave them.

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To quote a famous saying : " We are not the owners of nature, we are its usufructuaries . "

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That’s an interesting twist. I always thought of disease, as COVID and Monkeypox, as being a form of Nature’s population control. Too many of us and we become diseased until Nature thins us out with disease. Just about everyone at Hellmart is diseased, IMO.

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Back to the OP - I think you’re suggesting we just need a big empire that does the right thing. Problem is, no one can/will ever agree on what the right thing is. And you can see it today. You and I look at a dictator like Orban, Hitler, Putin, and think oh how evil. But the other half of the world looks and thinks, oh how good, just what we need. In the case of the Roman Empire, I think as harsh as they were, they DID create progress until this crappy little religion started in one of the outlying shit holes and upset the applecart. Go figure.

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And this is already happening, the endemic diseases are on the increase and become adapted to our antivirals faster than we can produce them.

And as Hellstrom reminds us, it is a stark fact that the smallest motile organisms, the insect, are also the most resistant and adaptable to what nature can create as a challenge.

We already have insects that are not only resistant to insecticides, they eat it as food. During some locust infestation, we need to use so much insecticide that the crop itself becomes inedible for humans and must be burned. That is a losing proposition for humans but does not seem to eradicate the locusts, they love DDT.

Chemical Defenses of Insects: A Rich Resource for Chemical Biology in the Tropics

Insects make up the largest and most diverse group of organisms on earth, contributing to as much as 80–90% of the world’s biodiversity. Approximately 950,000 species of insects have been described; some estimate there are 4,000,000+ species in total. Over 70% of drugs on the market are derived from natural compounds. However, insects are one of the least explored groups in drug discovery.

The world adds about 70 million people each year. In this chapter you will find: (1) an introduction to the topic of arthropod chemical biodiversity and chemical defense; (2) a brief discussion on various uses of insect chemistry by various cultures; (3) an overview of insect venoms and other chemical defense studies, with a case study on methods utilized to analyze ant venoms; (4) a short discussion on the importance of preserving tropical habitats for bioprospecting; (5) a review of research on stick insect (Order Phasmatodea) chemical defenses, stick insects as a model for biosynthesis studies and my personal experiences with the editors of this book and 2008 PASI workshop in Peru which resulted in this chapter; (6) an overview of examples from the literature of insect-derived substances with medicinally relevant biological properties such as toxins and antibiotics; (7) a brief description of the importance of studying biosynthetic pathways in insects and other organisms from whence valuable natural products are identified and (8) a list of recommended literature which I expect would be of particular interest to the readers of this chapter.

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Wood ants-Formica rufa-defending their nest by spraying formic acid. The formic acid is used to deter any attacking predators. Dorset England UK GB.

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They manage to win the occasional election, but it’s not half the world that loves them. They don’t last, they don’t build alliances, or create programs that others embrace.