There is only one primary resource from which all other resources are derived.
Civilized humans.
And we all know what civilized means. It means humans who build stuff rather than rob each other.
Let's just call them "people".
Now, obviously, not all humans are people, but in the universe we know of, all people are humans. So most schemes for reducing the number of humans are going to reduce the number of people.
When you reduce people, you reduce everything else.
Why? Because every other raw resource requires people to extract it from the natural universe. And every other refined resource requires people to refine it.
To have anything at all worth having, you need people. And the more people you have, the more they find or make stuff worth having.
Even the fruit you pick from a tree is the result of selective breeding by farmers. Even the wild animal you hunt, you hunt with a gun or bow, then butcher with steel tools.
Civilization is better than savagery, and we know this because the microsecond savages see our tools, they abandon their primitive lifestyle for as much technology and beer as they can get their hands on.
And civilization is made by people.
With less people, we doom ourselves to conserving scarce stuff until civilization collapses, stuff that isn't actually scarce because it's running out, but because we'd no longer have the manpower to make it.
With more people, we mine asteroids, create new species, harness new technology and inherit the stars.
So why don't scientists understand this? Why are they so retarded?
Scientists lack wisdom because they do not regularly witness their own ignorance.
A carpenter knows many things about wood. He knows how to select, shape, finish, and join it. He knows how to build things.
But a carpenter builds houses. And so when he builds a house, he sees the electrician come in to wire it up. And he knows that the electrician has to know a whole bunch of shit that he, the carpenter, doesn't.
This teaches him the basic principle that shit is complicated, yo.
He might not see the electricity that runs his drill is generated, or how the truck that delivers his lumber is made. But he knows that shit is complicated, yo, so he figures those are hard problems, too.
The scientist, however, is steered into focusing on his specialty. He rarely if ever works with anyone outside his own field, and even more rarely works with anyone outside of academia.
Outsiders regularly come to him to ask his expert opinion, or learn from his specialized knowledge, but very rarely is the situation reversed. The scientist is always the teacher, never the student. And this stunts and distorts his thinking.
Oh, sure, you can talk to him, and he'll pay lip service to the idea that civilization is complicated and has lots of moving parts. But in practice, his thinking about that civilization is always distorted by underestimating the complexity and difficulty of non-scientific fields.
He tends to think that houses are built, and ships are sailed, and oil is drilled, by dummies who weren't smart enough to go to college and be scientists, so how complicated could it be?
I've had the misfortune to work with a lot of scientists, and you would be surprised how incurious they are about the universe outside their bubble.
And how eager they are to pontificate about it, spouting total NPC gibberish.
With the utter conviction that this NPC gibberish has somehow become smart, because it has now emerged from a scientist's mouth hole.
@LukeWeinhagen Translated for idiots like me; the suffering for independence is great, but is swift, but the suffering of dependence is great and long lasting ...
When you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
I don't know who actually rules Britain, not for sure, but whoever they are, there is a consensus among them that Britain is to be a third world nation, and its primary religion is to be Islam.
All other explanations are implausible.
There’s a thread I keep seeing, and running into in conversations, where those that believe strongly in American Exceptionalism also believe they if we could just stop all the bad people, or make the bad people go away, American Exceptionalism would just pop back into place.
This misses entirely that if you want to be exceptional, you have to be exceptional.
Exceptionalism has to be perpetually engaged in. It is not the default state (by definition).
The bad guys aren’t going to stop being bad guys. But we can start being exceptional again any time.
Attempting to be exceptional can be uncomfortable and fraught with risks, but it’s also rewarding. And it’s the only way to really eventually beat back the bad guys.
Please notice the four crucial elements at the center of all of this.
One, unable to take criticism.
Two, lack of empathy.
Three, manipulative.
And four, relationship difficulties.
Now I want you to think about many of the people who give advice online or who try to stir up the gender war, who try to pit men and women against each other, who write articles about "why man bad", "why woman bad".
These very people are unable to take any criticism of their position. Even well-meaning, well-written, and respectfully delivered criticism is ignored, or worse, attacked.
They completely lack empathy for others. By that I mean they are solipsistic. They only consider their own interests valid. Everyone else's interests are irrelevant.
They are also manipulative. They create fake scenarios, misuse studies, labels, and data. More importantly, they use the GSRRM series of manipulative tactics that I discuss in my book, Become Immune to Manipulation: They're Manipulating You and How to Resist It (available on Amazon), where I teach you how to defend yourself against this kind of attack.
Note that their manipulation is designed to get them something at your expense, which makes them your declared enemy.
Lastly, these individuals are, by and large, single, often after multiple failed relationships. Occasionally, one will say that they have a great relationship, and then discuss it like her husband is a Labrador, basically her pet.
The individuals giving relationship advice online are, by and large, complete failures at relationships who are suffering from a number of personality defects and disorders that are evident in their writing and the positions they take on relationships and gender dynamics.
Do not listen to these people. They will make you as miserable as they are.
The good news is that there are competent people giving relationship advice. I am one of them. Follow me. See who I interact with. See who I share. See which posts I like, and you will find the other people online who give great advice.
@pegobry_en that's actually vain-glory, which is pride about what is true, arrogance is pride that cannot be backed up, it believes it deserves recognition for nothing...
It isn't. But as long as we have social media and democracy, there will be a political incentive to weaponize the enmity between men and women, and very little can stop this process.
My dude, stop.
It isn't "2 billion Muslims" that is being blamed.
It is ISLAM.
Islam itself. It is a creed. It believes things and teaches things.
And many of these things are evil.
If a self-described Christian launches into a campaign of mass murder, claiming he is following the teachings of Christianity, people can and will say "That's not loving one's neighbor. That's not in line with the teachings of Christ."
But when a Communist launches into a campaign of mass murder, claiming he is following the teachings of Marx, people will just nod and say "Yes, that's right. Marx does want to murder the bourgeoisie in a bloody revolution. That is what he teaches."
And when a Muslim goes on a campaign of mass murder, claiming he is following the teachings of Islam, people rightly also say "Yes, that's right. Muhammed does actually command killing the kaffir in blood jihad. That is what he teaches."
What the rest of the world sees is
• Muslims who do the evil stuff, which is entirely consistent with their faith (the ones you call "extremists")
• Muslims who don't do it themselves but support it (which appears to be the vast majority of the 2 billion Muslims)
• Muslims who don't like the evil stuff in Islam, but appear to simply be hypocritical Muslims who in fact reject any parts of Islam they don't like
That is, almost everyone in the world agrees that what "the extreme Islamists" are doing is genuine Islam, whether they are for it or against it.
I think it is very much real Islam, which is why Islam needs to be kept out of any countries which it hasn't already invaded and rooted out of any it has but hasn't devoured.
Muslims who want to disavow the worst parts of Islam, like you apparently, are still a danger because they BRING IN ISLAM.
And Islam leads to all the bad stuff you disavow.
They fact that you are a Muslim and ALSO disavow the worst parts of Islam is a property of YOU, not a property of ISLAM.
Just as there are professing Communists who wouldn't hurt a fly. If such personally harmless Communists nevertheless spread Communism, before long hundreds of millions of flies do get hurt.
So even your sanitized version of Islam is a danger.
And all that assumes you are honest about your own beliefs — which one wishes in charity to assume, but since one tenet of Islam is the moral goodness of lying about Islam to further the cause of Islam, one cannot even be sure you aren't running a stealthy justification for the kind of Islam you denounce, working to spread Islam by falsely convincing as many people as you can that any bad Islamic things "wasn't real Islam."
When a Communist tells us that the horrors of Communism "wasn't real Communism", we aren't inclined to think he is being particularly honest.