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Why Earthlings? Because the purpose of my blog is to suggest that we are all in this together on this planet we call earth. Labeling others only serves to separates us into groups or categories. Some of these are American, Russian, Chinese, black, white, yellow, fat, thin, ugly, beautiful or any label you care to use. It makes it seem as though we are different and then somehow separate from each other. My opinion is that we are not separate from each other but united. We all inhabit this planet called Earth. Everything that happens on it in some way affects each and everyone of us. This makes us united instead of separate as some may think.
If you have read this first page then you are encouraged to read further. Comments are really appreciated about what you think of this website and the posts written here. It doesn’t matter what your thoughts are they will be responded to. Earthlings can only bring about change if we begin to have a free discussion of ideas on how this is to occur.
Looking around at this Space Ship earth the hope is that you see Earthlings need to do things differently than we have so far. Earthlings can do better than we have up to this point. This Space Ship earth can be a paradise if we only put our minds to it.
Our Spaceship Earth
There Are No Boundaries From This View
Please leave a comment by clicking on the button in red. It does not matter what your comment is it is appreciated. It can be a start to a dialog that I believe we need to have. Thanks!
It is crucial whenever discussing something to lay out our most basic assumptions. Doing so creates a foundation from which we can then build our rationales.
It seems to me that you have some basic assumptions regarding this topic that should have been mentioned in this post. It seems to me that your point rests upon an assumption that everyone should live forever, that everyone should receive whatever healthcare that they may need (or want?), and that everyone should receive that healthcare regardless of whether they can pay for it. I will challenge these assumptions.
Enabling people to live substantially longer (or forever) will only exacerbate our already alarming problem of overpopulation. Moreover, our civilization needs human labor a lot less than it used to thanks to automation. We are moving toward a society of consumers (with some content creators) where machines will do nearly all (or all) of the necessary work to sustain our way of life. In such a society, what would we need many billions of people for?
This shift in our society will also affect the issue of whether people should be able to receive medical care without paying for it. In a society which is desperate for human labor or desperate for people with certain skill(s), it may make sense to ensure that such people are kept in working condition. If we are moving toward a society with little or no need for human labor to sustain it, then why should society float people? It could be argued that, if machines are handling medical services then why not program the machines to provide medical services to everyone? Well, money -the economy- is really a way to control access to and the consumption of resources. It may not be a great idea to provide unlimited medical care to everyone -even if administered by machines- because that could lead to the rapid depletion of medical resources. Keep in mind that this does not only refer to the raw materials that are used to make the medicine and medical devices but ALSO to the number of uses of those things before the diseases adapt to them. We are already seeing that most of our medications are quickly loosing their effectiveness now when only a portion of the population has access to them. The World Health Organization and many other medical organizations are convinced that human civilization is due for a (ahem) rash of pandemics, because we cannot keep pace with the evolution of pathogens.
The takeaway from this is that medical care may not be for everyone. Moreover, the effort to give medical care to as many people as is possible will likely prove somewhat futile as it has enabled an explosion in population and a corresponding squandering of precious uses of limited medicinal resources. In other words, life is a self-correcting system and humans can either pay the piper now with little interest or pay the piper later with lots of interest (perhaps in the form of a superbug-driven pandemic), but, either way, life will bring biosphere into balance either by reducing the human population to a manageable number or by eliminating humanity.
NOW, if we decide to spit into the wind in the form of democratizing medical care anyway, then I think that the best way to do so may be to ban medical insurance. It will likely result in a year or two of difficult transition, but the medical industry will eventually have to lower prices to more reasonable levels. There are not enough rich people to sustain the industry; it will have to appeal to the plebes. Sure, some people will still not be able to pay, but that would not change under a national insurance scheme as minimum wage earners would not be able to afford to pay premiums.
I appreciate your thoughtful response. I understand that over population is a very disconcerting reality on our earth now. I think that Earthlings have an expiration date. No one lives forever. However while they are here I do not see the reason for suffering. There is a balance that somehow needs to be reached where medical care is given to everyone and yet the population issue is addressed.
This issue itself is complicated by the religious beliefs of millions of people. Their beliefs do not allow for limiting birth or having an abortion. Some religions even teach that the more children you have the better. Governments even have laws that also hinder any attempt at population control. So how do you start to reduce the population of this planet? This is a question that needs more discussion.
Your other points are well taken. It would be nice to be able to address them yet the answers for me are allusive at best. Some of what you say is based on the current economic system. Since this system is not designed to meet the needs of all but only the few it needs to be changed also.
All change it seems to me must come from thinking outside the box we find ourselves in. What exists on our planet earth in the form of political, social and economic systems is destructive. This is to our planet earth, our space ship, and all plants, creatures and Earthlings. Thus the purpose of this Blog.
Thanks again for your thoughts. I hope that others will read it and we can have a discussion about how to address some if not all of the problems we face in these lives we have.
One of the finest sources to study the ancient Sanskrit scriptures of India, where a lot of these topics have been discussed. The wealth of literature from that era, mainly spiritual dwarfs all other literature put together. It answers an array of questions that has plagued mankind for eons.
Higher thinking. Thank you.
I would say that humans alike love to use labels to somehow understands the environment. At first they were labels such as tree, sky, blue, green, dangerous, safe. But the evolvement of human kind has lead to a vocabulary expansion and now we love to segregate the smallest of details and categorize the mi-nute meanings, all for our conscious understanding. I tend to find myself subconsciously staring at people and gather information and pile up assumptions based on my experiences on who they could be based on appearance. Which is tedious to say the least. I would say it’s nice to just take a step back from modern society and be able to not label anything. Using words such as humans, and homeosapians helps hinder the labels of race, age, sex, and just brings beings together. Which is why I like the word earthlings, it has a nice ring to it. Plus, it won’t offend anyone (hopefully), so it’s impossible to create anything other than uniformity when saying the word.
Thanks for your comment. Labels are indeed for us to communicate with each other in a meaningful way. Yet they also cause us to judge others in either a negative or positive way. It would be nice if we all could view each other as just earthlings. Your comment was very thoughtful and insightful.