Cav's Place

Once again, last night I was told that the ideals I strive for are nothing but dreams and utopias that will never happen and therefore don’t matter, since what’s important is “reality” and how things actually work now, as if that has any relevance other than to determine what needs changing. The fact that pretty much everything we take for granted today was an impossible dream, or in some cases perhaps a nightmare, until somebody made it reality is, of course, entirely lost on people with this mindset, which unfortunately are the tremendous majority. After all, perhaps the most defining trait of being “normal” is apathy, accepting things as they are and not pushing against the current for a clear cause, whether due to not believing that anything better is possible or simply due to wanting others to take the risk and do the work instead.
The problem with that, of course, is that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. It takes many, from all over the world, to make something major happen. One can’t do it alone, or with a hundred or a thousand or even ten thousand, but those who want to fight are few and scattered while those who won’t are billions, and all it takes to fight in favor of the status quo is to not actively fight against it. Those few at the top, who reap the benefits of the current state of affairs, share a part of the blame, but things are as they are mainly because of the billions who don’t actively fight for change, who tolerate the current situation instead of saying “this ends here, now” and acting on that statement. Their lack of action, their acceptance of the status quo, creates way more than the necessary critical mass in favor of the current conditions and renders the efforts of the few willing to fight next to useless. To use terms that are now widespread, the scheming of the 1% can be defeated, but the apathy of the 99% is a much tougher adversary.

There are, in fact, many ways to create change with sufficient people, but just to name a very obvious and effective one, is anyone honestly going to tell me that if a million people, not to mention more, would sit down one day in the middle of the capital of an European Union country, particularly one of the most important ones, or in the capital of Canada, or maybe that of Australia or even the United States, with a clearly stated and fair demand that would be not only in their best interest, or that of their friends and families, but in the best interest of the large majority of people and of the world as a whole, they’d be ignored? Of course, it’d be even better if this would happen in all of these countries, or even all over the world, but it may be enough if it’d happen in only one of them, especially if that million won’t include only citizens of the country in question, but people from all over the world, and at least a hundred or so from each developed country.
Now keep in mind that I’m not talking about regular protests, where there could be disagreements, nasty elements, agitators, excuses for the authorities to intervene. I’m also not talking about events with a schedule, showing up between this time and that time and then going back home. I’m talking about gathering that critical mass and having everyone just sit there on their butts, calmly, saying they’re not budging unless the powers that be figure out how to meet their demands, immediately and in full, and remaining there until they’d die of thirst and hunger if need be. So are you going to tell me that any of the countries I mentioned would ignore this, or that they’d dare to arrest, kill or let die a million or more, especially if many would be citizens of other countries, if they’d see that they have no way to make them budge or sway them with anything that falls even the tiniest bit short of meeting their demands?
As I said above, if that would be tried by small groups, and when it comes to truly major demands that’d require completely changing the way the world works even tens of thousands would still clearly be a small group, it’d be a complete waste, as at first they’d perhaps be ignored, and eventually they’d be arrested or mopped up one way or another. And, of course, there are parts of the world where even such large numbers may face a similar fate, regardless of the potential international consequences. But if a sufficiently large number of people would be sufficiently determined to do something like this in a country that definitely can’t afford to be blamed for a million or more corpses filling its streets, the authorities would probably try some of the usual tactics for the first couple of days, but then they, and all the others who currently maintain this system, will be forced to give in, fully and unconditionally.

What’s strange is that, for a clear pessimist, I sure seem to believe in the possibility of good things happening more than anyone else I ever talked to, as long as we’re talking about the very big picture. It’s true that, for example, some things can’t be done until their time comes, until we reach the level of technological development required, but it would seem to me that the time for many changes is now, and that one of those changes whose time has come is that which was the topic of the discussion that triggered this post, namely eliminating the finance-based system and the need to earn a living, offering everyone not proven guilty of a serious crime the healthy food, clean water, comfortable housing and quality medical attention required to survive at no cost and switching to a fair resource-based economy for everything else.
After all, contrary to popular belief, if something is as it is, it doesn’t mean it can’t be changed. Even if something has been more or less this way since the dawn of civilization, throughout nearly all significant human cultures, it doesn’t have to continue being like this in the future. Once again, everything’s impossible until it gets done by somebody who never heard or, more likely, never believed that… Though what’s most unfortunate is that every single person who doesn’t believe that something is possible makes the task of those who try to prove them wrong ever more difficult.

“Folks have been conned into thinking they can’t change the world, have to accept what is. I’ll tell you something my friends. The world is changing every day, the only question is who’s doing it.” (Reverend Will Dexter – Babylon 5)

Didn’t have much hope for getting it back this week, but in the end it seems that waiting for the shop to fix the UPS before posting anything here worked, because I have it now. Unfortunately, I gave it to them just as I bought it, in the original box and with everything else that came with it, but got it back without the USB cable, which wasn’t listed as having been included in what they received. Then again, the CD and the manufacturer’s warranty papers weren’t listed either, the note only mentioning the box and, supposedly, a power cable, but they gave those back, possibly because nobody ever got them out of the box. Seeing as this model doesn’t have a removable power cable, so there was no reason to list it as an accessory, it was probably an honest mistake, somebody listing power cable instead of data cable and dad not noticing it then, and it’s not exactly a problem anyway, as I still have the one from the UPS I had before this one, but it is somewhat annoying.
Either way, what’s important is that so far it seems to work, or at least the problem it had developed, which made it unable to even start anymore, no longer exists. Whether or not the next power fluctuation or failure will cause it to reappear, I don’t know yet, as last night when I tested it with only the monitor plugged in the voltage only went up to 241, so it didn’t even start correcting to be able to test even the most commonly used function, seeing as I often get over 250V at night. All I did was run two consecutive battery self-tests, which went fine but are hardly relevant considering the 1% load resulting from the monitor alone… Then again, that 1% load is rather weird in itself, as the log tended to show a 3% to 5% drop in load when I turned off the monitor before.

In other news, some strange machine popped up behind the building yesterday. Nobody was around it and nothing happened all day, but today there are workers there and it seems to be digging. From what I heard so far, it appears that the people working at that heating station or whatever it is decided to dig for water and hook up their own supply after conflicts with the water company. Exactly what this entails and what sort of developments and consequences we can expect as a result of it, I have no clue at the moment, but I doubt it’ll be pretty.

Yes, I know that a week ago I was saying I’ll probably add my current computer upgrade plans to the post written after I’ll get the UPS back, but ski jumping is about to start and I’m going to watch that, so I’ll once again leave that for another time. There’s not much to say about it anyway, considering the changes I made, and it’s definitely possible that I’ll end up writing about it as early as tomorrow, seeing as I need a second post this week and at the moment, while I obviously have several topics I’d like to write about, I’m lacking any sort of motivation to do so.

A couple of days ago, I noticed an article about the first official, FIA-sanctioned, racing series reserved for fully electric cars: Formula E. It will debut next year and the first season is set to consist of ten races, all taking place on street circuits. Currently, the confirmed venues are Rio de Janeiro and Rome, and negotiations are supposedly very advanced for London as well, so there are seven “slots” still open and they’re even asking for suggestions.
What’s rather interesting is that, even though a single team is currently confirmed, cars for ten have already been purchased from the official supplier. That seems to be the upper limit, however, seeing as the article states that if any team will build and develop its own cars, the ones which should have been made available for them will be used for roadshows and other racing activities, so the number of team “slots” won’t be increased. At the same time, if they already have plans for the cars that will remain unused, I assume they’re also considering the possibility of having less than ten teams at the start of the season.

Personally, I find the whole concept very interesting and worth supporting, though it’ll be weird to see them changing cars during the race, seeing as recharging batteries quickly enough was impossible and replacing them was considered unsafe. In endurance racing, the car changes drivers, but Formula E races will apparently last for one hour and during that hour it’ll be the drivers who’ll change the cars. There are hopes that improvements in battery life, recharging technologies or both will eventually make this unnecessary, and when that happens it’ll certainly be a very positive signal for electric cars in general, but for the moment they picked this option and I have to admit that I have some misgivings about it.
Another issue I have with the current plans has to do with racing only on street circuits, which they admit won’t allow the cars to show their true potential. This is even more worrying when connected to the issue mentioned above, because I’m quite sure that this decision was at least in part motivated by the fact that battery life would obviously be even shorter if the races would take place on “proper” circuits, where the cars would reach higher speeds and maintain them for much longer. Or, of course, it may also mask some issues the cars currently have if they’re required to maintain such a high level of performance for longer than the duration of a demonstrative run.
As such, if this racing series was supposed to make people believe that technology will very soon allow fully electric engines to completely replace conventional ones, I fear it isn’t doing a particularly good job at the moment, which is a real pity, seeing as we urgently need clean alternatives in all sectors of transportation. At the same time, the current cars are clearly far from the best they can be, being provided so any team desiring to enter will be able to do so easily, so we can hope for rapid developments in the future. If the series will be properly promoted and sufficient incentives for participation and innovation will be provided, it certainly has a good chance to drive forward the development of the technologies needed to green the transportation sector worldwide.

I still managed to avoid any Sunday updates this year, but there may be one tomorrow, since this will just be a quick one and I obviously still don’t see myself up to writing something serious and non-personal then. It may happen, but it’ll be hard and, unless something just happens that’ll just trigger a rant, I doubt it. Such a rant helped me put in two non-personal posts last week at least, so it won’t be a problem to have two personal ones this week from that point of view, but it’d sure be disappointing.

I wanted to wait before posting something else personal because I hoped I’d get my UPS back, after it also failed under warranty, and add the whole story about that as well. They said seven to ten days, but those are up even if they were working days, because it failed exactly two weeks ago and was taken to be repaired the next Monday, so yesterday was the tenth working day and it’s unsettling to be without one for the first time in eight years. At least there have been no power failures since then, but I do have to keep reminding myself to save often if I’m doing something.
When I’ll get that, I’ll probably also post something about the current upgrade plans for the computer, which have basically been switched to just what’s urgent, more or less resulting in a switch between what was originally planned for this year and what I was thinking about getting next year. But for now I think I’ll just go back to playing Divinity II for a while, and later see if I can move a few more of my old reviews from BookCrossing to Goodreads, as tedious as that is, since I switched from Shelfari to that at the end of December and thought I might as well try to put everything in one place now.

I was sent a link today to yet another of those idiotic rants that are so popular among that particular breed of so-called “activists” that would perhaps be better referred to as simply rebels without a cause, or at least without a cause that makes sense and may be worth supporting, seeing as their behavior and goals, inasmuch as they have any, tend to give activism a bad name. I’m talking about the rants about the supposed agenda certain “elites” have to depopulate the world, likely by killing people, usually for their own nefarious purposes.
Admittedly, this particular piece is less focused on those nefarious purposes, such as the need to maintain control, and actually makes a point of stating that those who call for a reduction of the human population appear truly convinced that it is necessary in order to save the planet, but the general idea that some terrible hidden agenda is at work and that those who try to push it forward must be stopped if humanity is to still have a chance remains. As such, I had to post a lengthy comment there, and I will copy it here as well, with just the few minor edits necessary to turn it from a comment referring to the post in question to something that would be appropriate on its own.

A bigger problem if we are to have a chance are people like these, which unfortunately are the tremendous majority, who reject any attempts to control population, whether they believe it’s some sort of evil conspiracy or just think with nothing but their gonads and are absolutely incapable of seeing how much of a problem population is. And the other problem is that the “elites” are either far from being as determined to do something about this as these people think, perhaps in large part because an increasing population is required to maintain the current economic model and the vast majority of them care for that far more than for the ecosystem, or they’re just not agreeing on how to go about it, so they keep pulling in different directions, because considering how easy to manipulate and control the vast majority of people are, if these “elites” would be acting on a clear plan to drastically lower population, it’d have started dropping significantly long ago and the planet would definitely be far better off. Whether humans, not counting said “elites”, would also be better off or not would depend entirely on the method used to reduce population.

The fact is that, while the top 2% do use about half of the resources that are currently used by humans, some 80% live in poverty, on various levels, and yet we still use 150% of what can be sustainably harvested. Align everyone to the “average” 18%, which include you and me and almost everyone else reading this, and we’d be at 250% with the current population. And that doesn’t just mean that we need a reduction to 40% of current levels, but to even less than that, because a lot of damage has been done already and the planet needs to be able to regenerate, plus that humans are just one species of many and the others that we share this planet with need to have enough to live good lives as well.
Now, of course, there are ways to reduce a person’s footprint, and a lot can be done by reducing that of the ones at the top, but that of the many who now live in poverty will need to be increased significantly if they are to have good lives, regardless of the advancements in green technologies. Of course, we should strive to reduce pollution, try to entirely eliminate substances that are harmful in themselves and not only because of the immense quantities that are currently used, increase reusing and recycling, improve efficiency and so on, but at the same time we shouldn’t reduce freedom by this, so we should be few enough so each person will have the resources and also the space available to lead what they’d see as a good life, within reason, without this having a noticeable negative impact on the planet’s ecosystem.

So we have three options here:
1. We move the majority of the human population to another planet. No population control here, but for one it’d just delay the inevitable, as continuing without population control would mean we’d be right back where we started on two planets instead of one before long. Plus that, of course, applying this solution is currently impossible and will remain impossible for a very long time.
2. We kill the majority of the human population, or let them die unnecessarily by not offering them access to resources, medical attention and so on. This is what the people who launch into such rants seem to believe the “elite” is up to and what some may unfortunately be up to if the problem isn’t solved otherwise. It would be a quick and easy solution, but of course an undesirable one, so in order to avoid it we must reduce the population through other means, so there will be no justification for this method… And so Nature itself won’t take care of the problem for us by doing this in one way or another, if said “elites” believed by some to have such a plan won’t “manage” it first.
3. We drastically reduce birth rates by any means necessary, perhaps to the minimum necessary to avoid a genetic bottleneck, and apply fair and objective eugenics rules to determine which few would still be allowed to have children, selecting for proven resistance to disease, extraordinary mental or physical abilities and special talents. Free sterilizations, free or heavily subsidized birth control, sexual education focusing on birth control, not counting abstinence as an option, direct rewards offered to those who’d willingly be childfree, freely waiving their right to even be tested, but also extremely harsh punishments for those who’d still try to have children despite not being allowed to.

I’d much rather go for option three, thank you very much, to both eventually reduce the population to sustainable levels and still maintain or even continue to increase both human lifespan and standard of living… But then there are people like these, who are unwilling or unable to see what’s right before their eyes, pushing us all towards solution number two, one way or another.