h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"
As long as everybody gets their own bananas and shares with the few in their Monkeysphere, the system will thrive even though nobody is even trying to make the system thrive. This is perhaps how Ayn Rand would have put it, had she not been such a hateful bitch.
"

http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html

A monkey dressed as a pirate. What's not to like?

Seriously...as a Marxist, what I'd like to get over to people is that Capitalism is nothing personal. The bourgeoisie are absolutely compelled to squeeze and oppress the proletariat in order to survive. And it's in the ineterests of the enlightened proletariat to kick back.

Last night I finished reading Thomas Homer-Dixon's 'The Ingenuity Gap'. He makes pretty much the same points with more eloquence and pages and less language you wouldn't use to your mother. Sadly, I think Donald Rumsfeld read the book as well and all he got out of it was his 'unknown unknowns' speech.

I found the most important point that should have been emphasized in the monkeysphere piece is that any and all of us can make a conscious decision to box up the broken glass for the garbage collector. I do. And I label it with 'broken glass!' in big black letters. We *can* expand our monkeysphere to six billion (less Donald Rumsfeld) if we *choose* to do so.












If we have free will, of course.

Interesting New Scientist cover story...especially wrt another thread and A Certain Person's apparent views on Humans vs Animals/ Chemicals:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg19826571.700-so-you-think-humans-are-unique.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=top1_head_So%20you%20think%20humans%20are%20unique?

Very good stuff. So let me get this straight, 100 Donald Rumsfelds need to have the same name so we know who they are but four bonobos can have different names?

Seriously, there is a lot to ponder there, thank you all.

The monkeysphere piece is amusing*, but misses the simple point that, although each human may have only limited acquaintance with others up to the theoretical 150 'in-group' limit, each individual human in any particular group is not restricted to knowing only members of that same group.

A knows B, and B knows C, and C knows D, but A may not know C, etc..

Our 'in-groups' overlap, at least potentially, outward to include all individual humans -- a 'meta group', if you will.

anhaga has the right of it: We *can*, (and do), expand our monkeysphere. It is one of the things that distinguishes our species
~~~~

Ed, as much as I'd like to read that New Scientist article, I'm reluctant to subscribe in order to do so.



*although perhaps not, as some may claim, hysterical!

Tal...

It's worth checking out the various NS YouTube links. I bought the magazine on dead trees.

As for A knows B knows C...Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. The whole world is our in group.

Here's a nice chart that shows what we *should* be doing in our six billion strong monkeysphere:

http://www.mediahell.org/worldwants.htm



Priorities, people!

When this thread popped up in my message centre I had no clue what it was going to be about but correctly guess whose journal it was

Monkeysphere I'll be testing that word out in my RL asap.

Good chart!

Also...if we did all those things, we wouldn't need to spend so much on the military in the first place.

I mean

I've just mailed off a note to my MP suggesting that he pressure the government of which he is a part to meet our millenium development goals. http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

Well at least your government is more than pulling its weight in taking in refugees.