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       #Post#: 1217--------------------------------------------------
       Cultural Errat
       By: RE Date: October 11, 2021, 4:31 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       Superman is BISEXUAL!!!
  HTML https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/new-superman-bisexual-dc-comics-issue
       Is he Top or Bottom?
       RE
       #Post#: 1245--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Cultural Errat
       By: Digwe Must Date: October 13, 2021, 2:03 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       Well, I don't know where the hell to put this.  I think it is
       tangentially relevant to a couple of different ongoing topics -
       so one of the wizards can certainly move it wherever you think
       it might do the most good - if you find it interesting.  If not
       - forget I said anything.  My wife always does.
       I had to copy the article or you couldn't read it without a
       subscription.  Near the end it references a survey that shows a
       phenomenal number of Americans who want to break up the union.
       Some interesting stuff about "epistemic hubris".
       The New York Times   October 6, 2021
  HTML https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/06/opinion/trump-voters-2020-election.html
       Trump True Believers Have Their Reasons
       By Thomas B. Edsall
       Just who believes the claim that Donald Trump won in 2020 and
       that the election was stolen from him? Who are these tens of
       millions of Americans, and what draws them into this web of
       delusion?
       Three sources provided The Times with survey data: the
       University of Massachusetts-Amherst Poll, P.R.R.I. (the Public
       Religion Research Institute) and Reuters-Ipsos. With minor
       exceptions, the data from all three polls is similar.
       Alexander Theodoridis, a political scientist at the University
       of Massachusetts, summed it up:
       About 35 percent of Americans believed in April that Biden’s
       victory was illegitimate, with another 6 percent saying they are
       not sure. What can we say about the Americans who do not think
       Biden’s victory was legitimate? Compared to the overall
       voting-age population, they are disproportionately white,
       Republican, older, less educated, more conservative and more
       religious (particularly more Protestant and more likely to
       describe themselves as born again).
       P.R.R.I. also tested agreement or disagreement with a view that
       drives replacement theory — “Immigrants are invading our country
       and replacing our cultural and ethnic background” — and found
       that 60 percent of Republicans agreed, as do 55 percent of
       conservatives.
       The Reuters/Ipsos data showed that among white Republicans,
       those without college degrees were far more likely to agree
       “that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump,” at 69
       percent, than white Republicans with college degrees, at a still
       astonishing 51 percent. The same survey data showed that the
       level of this belief remained consistently strong (over 60
       percent) among Republicans of all ages living in rural, suburban
       or urban areas.
       With that data in mind, let’s explore some of the forces guiding
       these developments.
       In their September 2021 paper “Exposure to Authoritarian Values
       Leads to Lower Positive Affect, Higher Negative Affect, and
       Higher Meaning in Life,” seven scholars — Jake Womick, John
       Eckelkamp, Sam Luzzo, Sarah J. Ward, S. Glenn Baker, Alison
       Salamun and Laura A. King — write:
       Right-wing authoritarianism played a significant role in the
       2016 U.S. presidential election. In subsequent years, there have
       been numerous “alt-right” demonstrations in the U.S., including
       the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville that
       culminated in a fatal car attack, and the 2021 Capitol
       Insurrection. In the U.S., between 2016 and 2017 the number of
       attacks by right-wing organizations quadrupled, outnumbering
       attacks by Islamic extremist groups, constituting 66 percent of
       all attacks and plots in the U.S. in 2019 and over 90 percent in
       2020.
       How does authoritarianism relate to immigration? Womick provided
       some insight in an email:
       Social dominance orientation is a variable that refers to the
       preference for society to be structured by group-based
       hierarchies. It’s comprised of two components: group-based
       dominance and anti-egalitarianism. Group-based dominance refers
       to the preference for these hierarchies and the use of
       force/aggression to maintain them. Anti-egalitarianism refers to
       maintaining these sorts of hierarchies through other means, such
       as through systems, legislation, etc.
       Womick notes that his own study of the 2016 primaries showed
       that Trump voters were unique compared to supporters of other
       Republicans in the strength of their
       group-based dominance. I think group-based dominance as the
       distinguishing factor of this group is highly consistent with
       what happened at the Capitol. These individuals likely felt that
       the Trump administration was serving to maintain group-based
       hierarchies in society from which they felt they benefited. They
       may have perceived the 2020 election outcome as a threat to that
       structure. As a result, they turned to aggression in an attempt
       to affect our political structures in service of the maintenance
       of those group-based hierarchies.
       In their paper, Womick and his co-authors ask:
       What explains the appeal of authoritarian values? What problem
       do these values solve for the people who embrace them? The
       presentation of authoritarian values must have a positive
       influence on something that is valuable to people.
       Their answer is twofold:
       Authoritarian messages influence people on two separable levels,
       the affective level, lowering positive and enhancing negative
       affect. and the existential level, enhancing meaning in life.
       They describe negative affect as “feeling sad, worried or
       enraged.” Definitions of “meaning in life,” they write,
       include at least three components: significance, the feeling
       that one’s life and contributions matter to society; purpose,
       having one’s life driven by the pursuit of valued goals; and
       coherence or comprehensibility, the perception that one’s life
       makes sense.
       In a separate paper, “The Existential Function of
       Right‐Wing Authoritarianism,” Womick, Ward and King,
       joined by Samantha J. Heintzelman and Brendon Woody, provide
       more detail:
       It may seem ironic that authoritarianism, a belief system that
       entails sacrifice of personal freedom to a strong leader, would
       influence the experience of meaning in life through its
       promotion of feelings of personal significance. Yet right-wing
       authoritarianism does provide a person with a place in the
       world, as a loyal follower of a strong leader. In addition,
       compared to purpose and coherence, knowing with great certainty
       that one’s life has mattered in a lasting way may be
       challenging. Handing this challenge over to a strong leader and
       investment in societal conventions might allow a person to gain
       a sense of symbolic or vicarious significance.
       From another vantage point, Womick and his co-authors continue,
       perceptions of insignificance may lead individuals to endorse
       relatively extreme beliefs, such as authoritarianism, and to
       follow authoritarian leaders as a way to gain a sense that their
       lives and their contributions matter.
       In the authors’ view, right-wing authoritarianism,
       despite its negative social implications, serves an existential
       meaning function. This existential function is primarily about
       facilitating the sense that one’s life matters. This existential
       buffering function is primarily about allowing individuals to
       maintain a sense that they matter during difficult experiences.
       In his email, Womick expanded on his work: “The idea is that
       perceptions of insignificance can drive a process of seeking out
       groups, endorsing their ideologies and engaging in behaviors
       consistent with these.”
       These ideologies, Womick continued,
       should eventually promote a sense of significance (as
       insignificance is what drove the person to endorse the ideology
       in the first place). Endorsing right-wing authoritarianism
       relates to higher meaning in life, and exposing people to
       authoritarian values causally enhances meaning.
       In “Race and Authoritarianism in American Politics,” Christopher
       Sebastian Parker and Christopher C. Towler, political scientists
       at the University of Washington and Sacramento State, make a
       parallel argument:
       Confining the definition of authoritarianism to regime rule,
       however, leaves little room for a discussion of more
       contemporary authoritarianism at the micro level. This review
       shifts focus to an assessment of political psychology’s concept
       of authoritarianism and how it ultimately drives racism.
       Ultimately, we believe a tangible connection exists between
       racism and authoritarianism.
       Taking a distinct but complementary approach, David C. Barker,
       Morgan Marietta and Ryan DeTamble, all political scientists,
       argue in “Intellectualism, Anti-Intellectualism, and Epistemic
       Hubris in Red and Blue America” that epistemic hubris — the
       expression of unwarranted factual certitude — is prevalent,
       bipartisan and associated with both intellectualism (an identity
       marked by ruminative habits and learning for its own sake) and
       anti-intellectualism (negative affect toward intellectuals and
       the intellectual establishment).
       The division between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism,
       they write, is distinctly partisan: intellectuals are
       disproportionately Democratic, whereas anti-intellectuals are
       disproportionately Republican. By implication, we suggest that
       both the intellectualism of blue America and the
       anti-intellectualism of red America contribute to the
       intemperance and intransigence that characterize civil society
       in the United States.
       In addition, according to Barker, Marietta and DeTamble, “The
       growing intellectualism of blue America and anti-intellectualism
       of red America, respectively, may partially explain the tendency
       by both to view the other as some blend of dense, duped and
       dishonest.”
       In an email, Marietta wrote:
       The evidence is clear that the hubris driven by intellectual
       identity and the hubris driven by anti-intellectual affect lower
       our willingness to compromise with those who seem to lack
       character and honesty. I suspect the divide in perceptions, but
       unanimity in hubris, feeds the growing belief that democracy is
       failing and hence anti-democratic or illiberal policies are
       justified.
       Marietta reports that he and his colleagues
       conducted a series of experiments to see what happens when
       ordinary citizens are faced with others who hold contrary
       perceptions of reality about things like climate change or
       racism or the effects of immigration. The results are not
       pretty.
       Once they realize that the perceptions of other people are
       “different from their own,” Marietta continued,
       Americans are far less likely to want to be around them in the
       workplace and are far more likely to conclude that they are
       stupid or dishonest. These inclinations are symmetrical, with
       liberals rejecting conservatives as much (or sometimes more)
       than conservatives reject liberals. The disdain born of
       intellectual identity seems to mirror the disdain arising from
       anti-intellectual affect.
       I asked Barker about the role of hubris in contemporary
       polarization, and he wrote back:
       The populist right hates the intellectual left because they hate
       being condescended to, they hate what they perceive as their
       hypersensitivity and they hate what they view as an
       anti-American level of femininity (which is for whatever reason
       associated with intellectualism).
       At the same time, Barker continued, the intellectual left really
       does see the G.O.P. as a bunch of deplorable rubes. They
       absolutely feel superior to them, and they reveal it constantly
       on Twitter and elsewhere — further riling up the “deplorables.”
       Put another way. Barker wrote,
       The populist/anti-intellectual right absolutely believe that the
       intellectuals are not only out of touch but are also ungodly and
       sneaky and therefore think they must be stopped before they ruin
       America. Meanwhile, the intellectual left really do believe the
       Trumpers are racist, sexist, homophobic (and so on)
       authoritarians who can’t spell and are going to destroy the
       country if they are not stopped.
       What is a critical factor in the development of hubris? Moral
       conviction, the authors reply:
       “The most morally committed citizens are also the most
       epistemically hubristic citizens”; that is, they are most
       inclined “to express absolute certainty regarding the truth or
       falsehood” of claims “for which the hard evidence is unclear or
       contradictory.”
       Moral conviction plays a key role in the work of Clifford
       Workman, a postdoctoral fellow at the Penn Center for
       Neuroaesthetics at the University of Pennsylvania. Workman,
       Keith J. Yoder and Jean Decety, write in “The Dark Side of
       Morality — Neural Mechanisms Underpinning Moral Convictions and
       Support for Violence” that “people are motivated by shared
       social values that, when held with moral conviction, can serve
       as compelling mandates capable of facilitating support for
       ideological violence.”
       Using M.R.I. brain scans, the authors “examined this dark side
       of morality by identifying specific cognitive and neural
       mechanisms associated with beliefs about the appropriateness of
       sociopolitical violence” to determine “the extent to which the
       engagement of these mechanisms was predicted by moral
       convictions.”
       Their conclusion: “Moral conviction about sociopolitical issues
       serves to increase their subjective value, overriding natural
       aversion to interpersonal harm.”
       In a striking passage, Workman, Yoder and Decety argue:
       While violence is often described as antithetical to sociality,
       it can be motivated by moral values with the ultimate goal of
       regulating social relationships. In fact, most violence in the
       world appears to be rooted in conflict between moral values.
       Across cultures and history, violence has been used with the
       intention to sustain order and can be expressed in war, torture,
       genocide and homicide.
       What, then, Workman and his co-authors ask, “separates accepting
       ‘deserved’ vigilantism from others and justifying any behavior —
       rioting, warfare — as means to morally desirable ends?”
       Their answer is disconcerting:
       People who bomb family-planning clinics and those who violently
       oppose war (e.g., the Weathermen’s protests of the Vietnam War)
       may have different sociopolitical ideologies, but both are
       motivated by deep moral convictions.
       The authors propose two theories to account for this:
       Moral conviction may function by altering the decision-making
       calculus through the subordination of social prohibitions
       against violence, thereby requiring less top-down inhibition.
       This hypothesis holds that moral conviction facilitates support
       for ideological violence by increasing commitments to a “greater
       good” even at the expense of others. An alternative hypothesis
       is that moral conviction increases the subjective value of
       certain actions, where violence in service of those convictions
       is underpinned by judgments about one’s moral responsibilities
       to sociopolitical causes.
       In a 2018 paper, “A Multilevel Social Neuroscience Perspective
       on Radicalization and Terrorism,” Decety, Workman and Robert
       Pape ask, “Why are some people capable of sympathizing with
       and/or committing acts of political violence, such as attacks
       aimed at innocent targets?”
       For starters, they note:
       Disturbing as it may be, individuals who become radicalized and
       involve themselves with terrorist organizations are, by and
       large, ordinary people. These individuals have typically
       functioning brains; they are not mad but are fanatics. Most are
       not psychopaths and, with the exception of lone wolf terrorists,
       are not especially likely to have psychiatric diagnoses.
       Instead, Decety, Pape and Workman contend:
       People who are otherwise psychologically typical may develop
       values and strong emotional ties to narratives and causes and
       become radicalized. Many individuals who sympathize with and
       even join terrorist organizations are educated and seemingly
       rational.
       This immediately raises another question: “Are there
       characteristics that distinguish individuals who merely hold
       extreme views from those who act on those views by engaging in
       ideologically motivated violence?”
       Decety, Pape and Workman cite a range of findings:
       From political psychology:
       Individuals who are cognitively inflexible and intolerant of
       ambiguity may become captive audiences for ideological,
       political or religious extremists whose simplistic worldviews
       gloss over nuance. Indeed, cognitive inflexibility has been
       positively associated with authoritarian aggression, racism and
       ethnocentrism.
       From neuroscience:
       The radicalism dimension, which included items such as “People
       should use violence to pursue political goals,” was related to
       increased activation of the ventral striatum and posterior
       cingulate.
       From the study of moral values:
       Violations of sacred, moral values may trigger disgust and/or
       anger responses that may set the stage for ideologically
       motivated violence.
       The tools of political science, neuroscience, evolutionary
       theory, psychology, cognitive science and sociology are all
       necessary to understand the ongoing upheaval in politics — not
       just in America but globally.
       On Sept. 30, for example, the University of Virginia Center for
       Politics and Project Home Fire released a survey showing
       unexpectedly large percentages of voters agreeing with this
       statement: “The situation in America is such that I would favor
       states seceding from the union to form their own separate
       country.”
       Among Trump voters, 52 percent agreed, with 25 percent in strong
       agreement; among Biden voters, 41 percent agreed, 18 percent
       strongly.
       There are credible reasons to find this alarming.
       By Thomas B. Edsall
       Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on
       politics, demographics and inequality.
       =============================================
       
       #Post#: 1341--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Cultural Errat
       By: K-Dog Date: October 20, 2021, 7:50 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       This looks like a good place for these:
  HTML https://youtu.be/jtTr8k6sh78
  HTML https://youtu.be/t74YeWd2SOs
       I agree with the fucked -up electronic meat monkey brain riding
       the back of a tiger comparison.
       COVID denialism which Rebecca talks about in the first video
       makes it crystal clear.  People are walking around with
       unlicensed brains.
       #Post#: 1343--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Cultural Errat
       By: RE Date: October 20, 2021, 9:26 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       [quote author=K-Dog link=topic=73.msg1341#msg1341
       date=1634777445]
       I agree with the **** -up electronic meat monkey brain riding
       the back of a tiger comparison.
       COVID denialism which Rebecca talks about in the first video
       makes it crystal clear.  People are walking around with
       unlicensed brains.
       [/quote]
       I think you need to go back to why about ALL cultures, civilized
       or not believe in a God or Gods.  It's because Homo Saps always
       look for an explanation for everything, including things which
       are unexplainable.
       How did life begin? WHY did life begin?  What is the purpose of
       living?  What came before the Big Bang?  Where did the stuff
       that went Bang come from?  Why does time only move forward?  Why
       is the Speed of Light fixed at 186,000 mps?  Why are so many
       people Jackasses?
       Science purports to answer many questions, but is really bad at
       answering philosophical questions people are actually concerned
       about.  God fills in the gap for anything you cannot explain
       otherwise.
       Since the invention of writing, stories passed down orally from
       the dawn of sentience were codified and written into books,
       notably here the Bible's Old Testament being one of the first,
       if not the first.  If you go back just a couple of hundred years
       before radio and television, reading stories out of the Bible
       was the only nightly entertainment for the family.  They could
       only afford one book, books were expensive.  Church is like a
       big book club, where everyone meets on Sunday to discuss the one
       book everyone owns.
       It's really only since radio and television that Atheism has
       become popular at all.  With that, people learned about other
       religions besides their own, discovering differences and flaws
       in all of them.  Which one to believe, which one is true?  Some
       people believe none are true, we call them Atheists.  Or
       sometime Agnostic if they won't commit one way or the other and
       sit the fence saying they don't know.
       The easiest thing to do is to simply accept the explanations of
       the religion you grew up with.  That is what most people do.
       Most people don't have time or energy to ponder on philosophical
       questions.  They are too busy worrying about how to pay the
       bills.
       RE
       #Post#: 1344--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Cultural Errat
       By: K-Dog Date: October 21, 2021, 12:50 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       [quote]If you go back just a couple of hundred years before
       radio and television, reading stories out of the Bible was the
       only nightly entertainment for the family.  They could only
       afford one book, books were expensive.  Church is like a big
       book club, where everyone meets on Sunday to discuss the one
       book everyone owns.[/quote]
       I was 12 years old and could not hang with god smiting a whole
       town because of a few bad apples.  God no better than the
       schoolyard bully.  God's **** up. I crawled under a table and
       would not come out.
       Would I have had the same feelings if I was born into a 15th
       century village.  Certainly not.  By 15 I'd be doing my share of
       smiting.  No problemo.
       But overall the situation has degraded.  Ignorance is less, but
       this happiness is canceled by how much more there is to be
       ignorant about.  More than cancelled.  The sea of potential
       ignorance is vast.  Basic rules about how the world works are
       confused in a new tower of Babel.  Technology has abstracted
       everyone from reality.
       Human knowledge is working out the same way the reindeer on
       Mathews Island worked out.
       [img
       width=300]
  HTML https://www.adn.com/resizer/-TCElaO19_05Tpiili9WaLBNOO8=/1440x0/filters:format(jpg):quality(70)/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-adn.s3.amazonaws.com/public/55D2XDUL2ZFBVGBDS4HP3AS4FU[/img]
       There are no reindeer there now.  And we are at peak data.
       #Post#: 1345--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Cultural Errat
       By: RE Date: October 21, 2021, 3:41 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       Well, here we are concerned with Ignorance rather than the
       Existence of God.  Because many Theists are Ignorant does not
       mean many Atheists are not Ignorant.  Many Atheists are firm
       believers that Science can answer all questions, and thus will
       find a solution to the current Shytstorm we are immersed in.  If
       you polled Atheists,  you probably would find Anti-Vaxxers among
       them.  Maybe for different reasons than the Theists, but still
       against getting Vaxxed, especially forced vaxxing.  Does not
       getting vaxxed automatically make you stupid?
       To try to tie Ignorance to the Existence or non-Existence of
       God, you have to ask the questions:  If God Exists, why did he
       make most people Stupid?  If God does not Exist, why did people
       evolve to be so Stupid?  Neither Religion or Science can answer
       these questions.
       If the God of the Old Testament exists, this could all be a part
       of the Master Plan.  That God really liked to Smite People, now
       we will get the biggest Smite of all time.  The Mother of all
       Smites!  If there is no God, you can write this off to Entropy
       and Dissipative Systems.  Either way, you end up with a whole
       lot of Dead People.
       RE
       #Post#: 1346--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Cultural Errat
       By: Digwe Must Date: October 21, 2021, 10:02 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       [quote author=RE link=topic=73.msg1345#msg1345 date=1634805705]
       Well, here we are concerned with Ignorance rather than the
       Existence of God.  Because many Theists are Ignorant does not
       mean many Atheists are not Ignorant.  Many Atheists are firm
       believers that Science can answer all questions, and thus will
       find a solution to the current Shytstorm we are immersed in.  If
       you polled Atheists,  you probably would find Anti-Vaxxers among
       them.  Maybe for different reasons than the Theists, but still
       against getting Vaxxed, especially forced vaxxing.  Does not
       getting vaxxed automatically make you stupid?
       To try to tie Ignorance to the Existence or non-Existence of
       God, you have to ask the questions:  If God Exists, why did he
       make most people Stupid?  If God does not Exist, why did people
       evolve to be so Stupid?  Neither Religion or Science can answer
       these questions.
       If the God of the Old Testament exists, this could all be a part
       of the Master Plan.  That God really liked to Smite People, now
       we will get the biggest Smite of all time.  The Mother of all
       Smites!  If there is no God, you can write this off to Entropy
       and Dissipative Systems.  Either way, you end up with a whole
       lot of Dead People.
       RE
       [/quote]
       “When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's
       my religion.”
       -- Abraham Lincoln
       “A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man
       can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live
       for. You are made in the image of what you desire.”
       -- Thomas Merton
       “For me, the different religions are beautiful flowers from the
       same garden, or they are branches of the same majestic tree.
       Therefore, they are equally true, though being received and
       interpreted through human instruments equally imperfect.”
       -- Mahatma Gandhi
       I
       #Post#: 1347--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Cultural Errat
       By: Digwe Must Date: October 21, 2021, 10:11 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       Forgot to include Abigail.
       “To be good, and do good, is the whole duty of man comprised in
       a few words.”
       -- Abigail Adams
       #Post#: 1348--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Cultural Errat
       By: RE Date: October 21, 2021, 10:43 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       [quote author=Digwe Must link=topic=73.msg1347#msg1347
       date=1634829084]
       Forgot to include Abigail.
       “To be good, and do good, is the whole duty of man comprised in
       a few words.”
       -- Abigail Adams
       [/quote]
       What is doing good?  To stop burning FFs to hopefully slow
       climate change, or to keep burning them so people don't die of
       starvation in cold dark homes?
       RE
       #Post#: 1351--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Cultural Errat
       By: Digwe Must Date: October 21, 2021, 5:35 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       [quote author=RE link=topic=73.msg1348#msg1348 date=1634831000]
       [quote author=Digwe Must link=topic=73.msg1347#msg1347
       date=1634829084]
       Forgot to include Abigail.
       “To be good, and do good, is the whole duty of man comprised in
       a few words.”
       -- Abigail Adams
       [/quote]
       What is doing good?  To stop burning FFs to hopefully slow
       climate change, or to keep burning them so people don't die of
       starvation in cold dark homes?
       RE
       [/quote]
       Ahhh... Now we get to the meat of it.  (no pun intended)
       That is a very important question and one that effects us all.
       Glad you went there. I can give you my opinion , but I really am
       looking forward to getting other takes on a critical subject.
       I'm going to say something that sounds like a cop-out platitude
       - but it ain't:  That depends.
       We are all in different circumstances, obviously.  Our
       individual ability to have an impact varies.  As you well know,
       for a sizable fraction of the world's population it's day to
       day.  This is not even an issue for debate. More access to more
       energy is is a better chance for survival, or even a little
       surplus, for so many.  On a personal level, I can't look at a
       kid in a bleak apartment in Warsaw (or anydamnwhere) and declare
       that she should be cold and hungry for any reason.  No way.
       That could be my grandkid.  The elite who would accept this
       drive to the conferences in armored limos.  They may need them.
       Of course, I get the argument against FF use. I've listened to
       many biologists say basically it's pay me now or pay me later.
       Cut it now and cause suffering or ride this horse until it dies
       and then endure much more suffering.  I also know that estimates
       are out there that without natural gas for fertilizer the
       current ag system would support about 4 billion people.
       I think that most of us can make more difference in our personal
       lives than we can trying to have an effect on broad policy.  No
       politician or national leader that I am aware of will tell their
       people they should be hungry so that we cut emissions.  I
       believe it is more likely that at some point fossil fuel
       production will be mandated regardless of the economics and then
       largely allocated to agriculture.  That is, while centralized
       states hold together.  I think they can pass all the emission
       goals and policies they want, but when the torches and
       pitchforks come out they'll start shoveling the last of the
       coal.
       I believe that what we do on a personal level is very important.
       We aren't going to save the whole shebang - not even close -
       but having a lower energy footprint in your own life helps you
       and yours anticipate and prepare for what is ahead.  It gets you
       thinkin'.  And besides:
       Just as ripples spread out when a single pebble is dropped into
       water, the actions of individuals can have far-reaching effects.
       Dalai Lama
       Over the last 20 years or so we've done much to cut our own use
       of fossil fuel.  I estimate we use about 30% of what we used in
       2000.  We grow much of our own food and are trying to increase
       that.  We drive much less.  We heat with wood.  This is a
       benefit because we use wood that would eventually be consumed in
       wildfire if we didn't use it.  And we make biochar and return it
       to the soil where the carbon sits for a long time. We're still
       on the electric grid - but it's hydro generated.  (goodbye
       salmon)
       "It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important.
       You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may
       not be in your time, that there’ll be any fruit. But that
       doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know
       what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there
       will be no result." - Gandhi
       Must feed sheep.
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