Africa (was ...10 trillion people in this solar system?)

--- In spacesettlers, "Omar E. Vega" :

> Hi,

>> I'm perfectly happy to see this "let's do it for our country (or
>> God)" attitude go by the wayside.

> It's your right. However if everyone thinks the same, both your
> country and your God will not remain alive for long.

If everybody thinks that "let's do it for our country (or God)" isn't
a good reason for reproducing, BUT THEY DECIDE THAT SOME OTHER REASON
IS, then my country can last a long time. And if my God isn't big
enough to take care of Himself, then who needs Him?

>>> After all, the purpose of life is to defeat death, and sooner or
>>> later decline and death get us all.

>> For now.

> Inmortality? Come on! Do you really believe on that? Not even Walt
> Disney succeeded on that :)

Well, what do we mean by "immortality?" I'll go for extream
longevity, though.

>>> And we defeat death having descendents. (the fountain of the
>>> ethernal youth is just fantasy)

>> For now.
>> Have any of us brought up the effects of increased longevity?

> Just retarding death does not avoid it. How long it can be posponed?

Long enough. A woman today who decides to put off having children for
a couple of decades may find that she is too old to handle pregnance
and stay in good health. What if she could pursue her career for
fifty years, and have another hundred healthy, fertile years ahead of
her. Note that this assumes a lifetime of less than two hundred
years, which is in no way "immortality."

>>> It seems to me the developed world has lost that myth already. A
>>> myth that preserves life. It is lost perhaps forever. And
>>> perhaps is too late by now to recover it.

>> I'm always a bit put off when somebody talks about the importance
>> of people buying into myths.

> Right. You think Ancient people was a bunch of idiots because
> believed in myths.

Um, I didn't say that.

> Have you ever though that perhaps is the modern society mentality
> which is wrong in many points?

The problem with modern society is that we *still* buy into the
comforting myths.

> In ecology, for instance, Native Americans were a lot smarter that
> the positive scientists of the 19th century.

Yep. But they killed off all the native horses and mammoths before
they got it right. And it took a lot longer than a hundred years.
And the Native Americans were not and are not stupid. But myth is no
substitute for reason. It's just what you use when you don't have
anything better. And for that matter, even myth is oftentimes
impacted by reason. Just not often enough.

> Almost everything is myth. Even modern science will be mythological
> a thousand years from now, lol. Remember flogist theory, spontaneus
> life, ether and all that stuff.

But nobody buys that anymore. Because science is self-correcting,
while myth is not. Thus biological evolution can accomodate the
discovery of DNA, while creationism cannot.

>> There is always, stated or unstated, the idea that "Well, *I* don't
>> need to believe this stuff, but it's best if the regular folk do."

> Anyways, in my case I do believe myth carry knowledge. Perhaps the
> form they are told are not rational by modern terms, but they carry
> a bit of truth which is important. Truths that in our arrogancy
> of "modern" and "advanced" fellows we don't hear.

Yes, myths carry a bit of truth. Myths are an attempt to understand
what is not understood. So a desire to understand "what are those
lights in the sky at night?" becomes "those are the campfires of the
Sky People." As these "campfires" are obseved over time, a lot of
truth is added about what stars can be seen at what time of the year.
These observations become refined enough that you can plan farming
around when this God's star appears and when that Spirit's
constellation no longer rises above the horizon.

None of which changes the fact that the lights in the sky are NOT
campfires. So extract the truth and let the BS fall by the wayside.