A Changing World

Originally Posted by Jyotir

It is realistic because it is possible.

Reality, the Real - arguably the root of “realistic” - not only allows for this, it supports it unconditionally as an evolutionary progression. But human beings have self-conscious free-will.

We just have to make the choice to relinquish a complacent attachment to the unsatisfying past and an irrational but cleverly rationalized fear and falsely reasoned doubt of the unconditional unlimited unknown available within each life, and all life. It is largely those two things - attachment and fear - that creates a dire insecurity which exacerbates the untransformed desires and tendencies which are further enabled by an ultimately impotent - but provisionally effective - human intellect, mind, e.g., desire-mind, e.g., when not guided by spirit/spiritual aspiration.

Hence the world we see, and importantly the organized human institutions of all type and manner which support the preservation and perpetuation of these ultimately self-destructive tendencies - even if at one time they were progressive and helpful. That vs. the cultivation of faith in a truly aspiring fully available spiritual life which provides for the actual - not cynically induced, manipulated, or coerced - human need... without greed, deceiving, or harming of others (or oneself!) or the wholesale destruction of the environment as a standard mode of existence and purpose.

There are people who don’t believe in God which is the same thing as not believing in oneself. There are people who say they believe in God but don’t actually utilize that belief or what it represents in a real practical way in and for themselves which also has an effect on others. There are people who pretentiously proclaim a belief in God but cynically exercise the undivine human tendencies for personal advantage, often at the expense of the collective. When all three become institutionalized as pervasive organized social structures in all areas of life, the result is highly organized aimless corruption, dysfunction, obsolescence, chaos, and destruction.

Very few human beings at present have not only recognized the true inner potential of existence but have also actually consecrated their life in a practical responsible way of implementation of those principles.

This is the crisis of our time. The current events illustrate this as a surface appearance, but superficial solutions will not suffice. It’s really quite simple... human beings need to wake up to who they really are and begin to live that truth as a work in progress - real spirituality - instead of doing everything possible to avoid it, including and especially the intensive organizing, including and especially the hyper-intellectual reasoning of that avoidance.

~ J

Thank you.

[BigJohn]

Originally Posted by Greenslade

It hasn't changed, it's the cycles of same-old same-old in present day contexts and not in historical contexts. "All this has happened before, and will happen again." The idea of cycles were well understood by the Mayans and many others across time and geography. If you look through history there have been plagues-a-plenty over many years, the only real difference is that because of technological advances in travel the world is a smaller place.

One of the last pandemics we had (according to the CDC) is the H1N1 of 2009. H1N1 should sound familiar, that version was similar to the one for 1918.

And then the pandemic before that - SARS. aS FOR ME, I have no idea how many times I had to be checked by a doctor before I could go to IMMIGRATION nor how many times I was placed in quarantine.


Surprisingly, most people have not heard of either of these pandemics. But then the 2009 H1N1 pandemic killed about twice as many people as COVID-19!

Originally Posted by BigJohn

One of the last pandemics we had (according to the CDC) is the H1N1 of 2009. H1N1 should sound familiar, that version was similar to the one for 1918.

And then the pandemic before that - SARS. aS FOR ME, I have no idea how many times I had to be checked by a doctor before I could go to IMMIGRATION nor how many times I was placed in quarantine.


Surprisingly, most people have not heard of either of these pandemics. But then the 2009 H1N1 pandemic killed about twice as many people as COVID-19!

Thanks for the info. I haven't gone into this is any depth but I am aware that that this has mutated over the years and has been doing for a long time, sometimes it's treated as a 'normal' flu and sometimes it becomes a pandemic. And I guess we'll have something else in the future to contend with. We've also had various plagues and pestilences throughout history that have decimated populations in the more distant past, but what makes it seem more surreal is its effect on society and that's a reflection of the modern times.

[Altair]

Originally Posted by Lucky 1

I have also put those 20 sections into a conservation easement....even after I die it can never be developed....it will remain wild into the future.

And thousands of land owners in the U.S have done the same with tens of thousands of acres of private wildlands for the same reasons...we wish this habitat to remain wild.

I think that's amazing. I wish we could do the same here... but everything has a function already, and is monitored like there's no tomorrow. That's been the reality in Europe for many centuries. If land here doesn't have a function it will be made ready for housing at some points as migrants pour in and will work in the cities, and then natives will move to the country.

The wilds are on few people's minds.

[Busby]

[quote=Lucky 1]

Originally Posted by Busby

And I can't believe you don't believe it!...I guess you just don't know...

The whole issue with your post is when you say "before we came along"....well we did come along and we're here to stay so that ship has sailed... and we need to responsible about it.

The reality is that in our modern world...the animals and wild places have to coexist with humans......and hunters, fisherman and outdoors men are the group that are leading the way with conservation programs and wilderness trusts to keep these places wild and literally putting there money where there mouth is to do so to the tune of billions of dollars a year.

Conservation led by the hunting community and pushing responsible bag limits and responsible use of our lands is what is literally saving the wilds!

I personally own 20 sections of Southern Texas wild lands....historic south Texas ranch land....it is all trees and brush with a spur of the Frio River running through....and yes, we hunt deer, hogs etc on that property.

I have also put those 20 sections into a conservation easement....even after I die it can never be developed....it will remain wild into the future.

And thousands of land owners in the U.S have done the same with tens of thousands of acres of private wildlands for the same reasons...we wish this habitat to remain wild.

Naturalist Aldo Leopold said it best 100 years ago: Only the hunter who has walked the woods and heard the howl of the wolf and been in step with nature can truly know it and appreciate what its loss would mean.

This is the kind of conservation you get from the hunting community all over.

I'd just like to say, with respect, that we've heard all this before.

Our hunting community goes berserk in Autumn killing off venison in all shapes and sizes so that there is nothing to see for the rest of the year - just to say. Proof that this slaughter is necessary are a few photographs which show a couple of bitten off saplings.

However and in spite of all the well-meant philosophies we hear and see, there are efforts having to be made by all sorts of people to save at least the remainder of nature - in all its forms - and without whose efforts all kinds of creatures great and small will simply disappear.

Any list of endangered species will make clear that we cannot afford to find excuses to destroy any further and by whatever means the nature which is around us.

Firearms have wiped out almost everything (including mankind) from the bison and buffalo of the American plains to the tigers of India once shot in their dozens everyday by such proud hunters of The East India Company. It seems to me that those thousands of camels, kangaroos, horses and other wild life shot from helicopters and left to die in pain in the Australia bush are to be regarded as worthless. They are all in the farmers' way, eat grass and don't bring any money. If we look upon them as being worthless we sleep much better. Reconciled so to speak 'in spirit'.

All species are being depleted - with a few exceptions - we humans have to find better ways of preserving nature than killing it which seems to be the hunters' reasoning - that doesn't work.

Both Poles are now contaminated and are suffering loss of life, our oceans are emptying themselves of life as well as of oxygen. Sharks swimming around without fins, fins which find themselves on China's tables. Lobsters and crabs and shrimps just thrown into boiling water and offered for sale with a good conscience.

In my country every time a bear or wolf appears in the mountains there is a hue and cry and it is shot. Naturally we don't want our children eaten by a bear but it is us who have moved into their territory and we need to find a way to let all animals live.

One day the world will be full of dogs and cats, rats and other animals - and we will be responsible. The adage of 'be fruitful and multiply' being well and truly ensconced.

[meetjazz]

Some old philosopher named Heraclitus once said ''The only constant is change.'' Everything is constantly changing and many people seems to notice only major changes, while minor, smaller, constantly changing and slipping in certain directions it seems to be invisible for many people, or at least they behave that way. We have slipped into ever-increasing individualism and materialism through the centuries we are merely a dot on i, completely individualistic culture, me myself and I, that's what we are globally, from this point of view, it is not surprising that a relatively mild virus that would not actually cause any major problems to anykind of society, or a culture that truly values life instead of the Ego, such society lives in much greater social harmony, and does not have real problems to solve social issues, but we arent that society. Anykind of ''social stuff'' creates huge problems for us...this virus expose our actual state of social development, and it might be a shock for many...This is reflected in the real world when our broken social systems can't handle a large number sick people, we lack hospitals, we lack doctors, we lack everything, but we do not lack fighter jets and tanks, and that alone tells more as an encyclopedia. Our culture will change radically, as we would need few more Plantes to live as we live today, we can't..we will change, or nature, through necessity will force us into change, but I don't want to live in the year 2100 or so...as it might be very ugly here on Earth.

[meetjazz]

double post, you can delate this one

Originally Posted by BigJohn

One of the last pandemics we had (according to the CDC) is the H1N1 of 2009. H1N1 should sound familiar, that version was similar to the one for 1918.

And then the pandemic before that - SARS. aS FOR ME, I have no idea how many times I had to be checked by a doctor before I could go to IMMIGRATION nor how many times I was placed in quarantine.


Surprisingly, most people have not heard of either of these pandemics. But then the 2009 H1N1 pandemic killed about twice as many people as COVID-19!

It is difficult to compare the virulence of any two diseases over time as the response to a given epi/pandemic is always a bit different, and medical knowledge and technology is always advancing.

The 2009 H1N1 does appear to be a far less virulent bug when comparing the numbers, as well as taking into account the confounding factors. The world has responded to the COVID-19 epidemic with unprecedented containment efforts (well, not all of the world ) and yet despite that, even in the first six to eight months, COVID-19 has already killed many more people. Looking at the numbers so far, it seems to me COVID-19 is a much more serious bug then the 2009 H1N1 bug.

- 2009-10 H1N1 total death estimates were around 123-203K or as high as 575K depending on source and time period looked at.
- COVID-19 total deaths are at 715K as of this morning (8/7/20) and it has only been around for 8 months.

However, if I am remembering correctly there was a vaccine ready for the 2009 H1N1 bug. At least I think that is the one I stood in line for an ungodly amount of time. If so, then that may have mitigated its overall impact substantially.
All that said, on balance, I would have to say COVID-19 is a much more serious threat due to its already much higher death toll, despite all of the mitigation efforts, and it has months more to go, assuming there is a vaccine ready in 2021, if not who knows how long it may continue killing people. True that some of the flu pandemics of the 1950 and 60s killed over a million worldwide, but again, confounding factors. We were in a very different place in terms of medical knowledge. Those are total estimated deaths after the disease ran its course, while COVID-19 still has a ways to go, so I would think it will exceed a million despite all the worlds efforts to slow and stop it. It would seem that the 1918 flu pandemic was a good deal worse then COVID-19, but again it is hard to compare given it came at the end of WW1, so the mitigation efforts were far less, and medical tech was still rather primitive. Not to mention the fact that the 1918 flu had the demobilization efforts and returning soldiers to help spread it along.

https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/ho...past-pandemics

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashb...23467b48e9ecf6

https://www.history.com/topics/world...%20Ame ricans.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...ion-180975040/

While this may seem like it is all academic, it does have real world implications. When COVID-19 was first getting going in the US, many politicians and others with no qualifications to express such opinions were running around comparing the death toll to seasonal flu and pointing out how much lower it was. It was an absurd comparison and any epidemiologist at the time could and was explaining why. Yet, it resonated with a big chunk of the population based on political ideologies alone and slowed mitigation efforts. Even today, despite the devastating and obvious consequences of their ignorance and careless actions, many any are still basing their opinions and actions on political loyalties rather then listening to scientific experts, and that is costing hundreds of thousands of lives in the US alone.

It is a symptom of a bigger problem and a perhaps more recent change/trend in the US and other parts of the world as politics and conspiracy theory has been increasingly displacing science in determining peoples beliefs and actions. Despite the fact that the information needed to form an informed opinion based on science, knowledge, facts, and statistics is readily available on the WWW, from scientific and fact based WWW sites, people are still prone to ignore all of that and spout out opinions based on what they 'think' they know, or to search out fringe conspiracy theories and cling to those. This of course is another confounding factor to consider when comparing epi/pandemics. Where are they getting their information, out of their heads, fringe WWW sites touting junk science, or from stats and the medical/scientific community?

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...-us-cases.html

We all say we have a right to believe anything we want, but few acknowledge the responsibility that may come with that, particularly when espousing such opinions influences others and many innocent people end up dead as a result.

[Lucky 1]

Originally Posted by Altair

I think that's amazing. I wish we could do the same here... but everything has a function already, and is monitored like there's no tomorrow. That's been the reality in Europe for many centuries. If land here doesn't have a function it will be made ready for housing at some points as migrants pour in and will work in the cities, and then natives will move to the country.

The wilds are on few people's minds.

Altair, I think its amazing too...and I'm part of it! And saving the wild lands doesn't come cheap!

I bought those 20 sections (for any that don't know, a section is 640 acres or one square mile) back in the early 1980's when i was in my mid 20's and paid about $75 per acre from what had been the old Bruni mineral Trust in Webb county Texas.

These days that property is worth $1,800 to $2,000 per acre and to support the cost of owning it I lease out cattle grazing rights to a couple of different cattle ranchers....have paying hunters on it every season and since I own the mineral rights....lease drilling rights to an oil company that pays me a percentage of what the wells produce.

In spite of that, it hardly supports itself because of land tax's.....so the conservation easement did two things...it insured that legally, it will stay 12,800 acres of wild lands forever and it also cut the land tax's down to nothing.

These are the bureaucratic games one must play as a land owner to have such a property.

So while its an expensive piece of property and I could sell it for a ton...I don't care about the money.....it will remain 20 square miles of hunt-able wild lands in perpetuity and my grand-kids and family will have a place in the country to get away from it all forever.

Another example of conservation that I'm involved in is the Coastal Conservation association.

I live right on the Gulf Of Mexico and just like hunters are doing there part to save the wild places on land the CCA is hugely evolved in restoring and protecting fish habitats along the gulf coast and the inshore areas known as the Texas Laguna Madre.....I live right on the Laguna Madre and donate to this orginization putting my money where my mouth is.

Here's the website for the CCA if anyone wants more info.
https://ccatexas.org/who-we-are/

[Altair]

@Lucky1; I'm shocked to see land is so cheap over there. I was born in the wrong place LOL!! 75$ per one square mile. Current costs are decent as well!

Sounds like a great 'project', that's something I'd love to have as well one day. I grew up on a large piece of land. We had a forest, and fields for sheep, fallow deer and horses. Costs of land here aren't even beginning to get close to what you experience(d) though, but it's something I will consider in the future. There's a good chance that more land will be available in the future as farmers are constantly pressured and more are moving to Canada and also Russia.

What are some of the animals that roam in your area?