u/trasguero

Historically it feels like the story of humans could be boiled down to a species that has gotten better at throwing stuff at each other. 5000 years ago it was rocks, today it is drones.

I find it deeply frustrating that we as a species have this manic obsession of reductionism. Activists are mostly interested in ending a specific conflict or war. And that is fine! It is important to help and to end conflicts and wars. However, this approach has been used for 5000 years now and it is simply not enough. Look at the state of the world in 2026, we have drastic anti human and anti intellectual movements worldwide. Not only are wars not being prevented, there are movements where they are being absolutely encouraged.

Anyone else feel frustrated that we absolutely know that even if we end one or a couple of conflicts and wars that we will absolutely just have to wait for the next one?

Again, I am not against activism and against peace or against ending wars or conflicts, I am for ending them for good!

If you thought that was the end, wait for the next part. Whenever such views are presented, people automatically believe that I am some kind of Bond villain. As if having the desire for world peace is some kind of automatic induction to be a villain!!! I have always found that frustrating but also a bit funny.

Also the other typical reaction is absolutely defensive with the typical "if you are so smatt then tell us what to do" trope. Like the life of Brian scene where Brian asks everyone to be individuals desperately seeking to be shown what to do. I also do not know, but I can tell you this, not addressing the core problems that lead to war but instead continously focusing on each war and conflict at a time will for sure not be the solution.

The claims are

1. competence and knowledge precede morality.

2. competence and knowledge can lead to morally and socially desirable outcomes without having a complete ethical argument.

Why is this relevant. Today in the radio, am NGO was making the case that urban design in terms of mobility should change to be more tender amd empathetic towards its citizens. The premise was not very well defined what was meant by tender. However it was clearly beleived that one major factor that prevents this tenderness from occurring is the necessity to produce and be productive.

I could not see the argument beyond being a greatly subjective claim based on some kind of morality. It was simply given that being more tender would lead to better outcomes although it was not clearly defined what tender was nor what the outcomes would be, it was clear that one important point would be to make walking and using the public transport more desirable or at least with less hurdles.

This is one example, however I tend to see many people that want to change some status quo making moral claims. They immediately dichotomize the world into good and bad. Obviously not everyone, but many NGOs do this and in many occurrences it is demonstrably wrong.

For example, the real economic value of walking and using bikes brings a net benefit in Europe whereas using cars brings a net cost. This is a much stronger argument because it moves people from being evil into showing how a system is inherently inneficient when it incentivizes using automobiles more than walking and cycling. So economics and productivity are not really the enemies of tenderness but rather the terrible urban designs that generate tons of costs.

In this sense, plenty of NGOs and spcial movements can move beyond the moral bases and into epistemological ones but they lack the econonomic literacy to do so. The reason is that they often wrongly c9nfound economics with finance and profits with economic value and economics overall with what they call capitalism. In other words, recognizing the real costs and the dramatic economic inefficiencies as quantitative knowledge can lead to greater changes and better outcomes than using moral bases for change.

Would you agree? Am I missimg something?

Naturally I am not stating that morals or ethics are not necessary for anything, I am stating that good intentions without knowledge lead to failed systems too.

How far away are we from a sufficient collective understanding of the world to live globally with a high quality of life for all?

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A) We have all the knowledge but cant or wont implement it.

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B) We still have to learn a lot

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C) We can never reach enough knowledge to achieve the described goal.

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We means the collective of humanity.

When so many Scottish fellas go elsewhere and cause beer shortages in Boston and such. Does this leave a beer surplus in Scotland? Are the local pubs and bars prepared to not sell for a while? Just curious.

Please be a bit patient. I provide a big picture approach of complex issues. Reducing the message would make it very vague and seem non operational.

Based on the work of Donella Meadows, the greatest possible impact on systems is through a paradigm change. We as humans are however stuck in very mechanistic andnlinwar ways of seeing the world. This automatically deala with the abstract world of ideas.

Based on social psychology, human beings have shared realities. In a nutshell it creates groups of people that have very similar views and interpretations of the world which lead to convergent behaviors within said groups. It also shows quite a lot of interesting theories like system justification theory that demonstrates how humam beings defend the status quo even if it hurts them and the defense is the most severe when the system is criticized.

Most human beings, including creatives and NGOs have a very limited view of economics and management. Just knowing that corporations and NGOs only see costs as something financial. Real costs are economic and must not always be quantified in terms of currency. In other words, social costs and environmental costs ARE always economic costs. While it may be a popular view that corporations are efficient, they really are not

So is this about definitions? No, it is about understanding that the linear views that we hold. The reductionist, atomistic and fragmented views that we hold do not allow us to make decisions that improve our outcomes. They decisions are:

1. Too local

2. Short term oriented

3. Transactional

These generate mountains of costs that are never really measured. For example an NGO correctly points towards using less fossil fuel energy. However, it would be more powerful to point out that energy efficiency IS in the interest of everyone. Thus, showing corporations and organizations in general exactly where the inefficiencies are would at the very least take the efficiency rhetoric and the self interest from the table. Showing how aligned and adaptive supply chains would vastly result in much better outcomes with much lower energy usage and vastly lower energy waste. Most corporations do not even achieve some alignment WITHIN their organizations (see for example Lee Triple A Supply chain). Imagine if you had a house with pipes that are all interconnected and all have different sizes, some are big some are small. This is the reality of supply chains where sustainability and real economic efficiency meet.

This latter example is one of many and the origin is our instilled view of the world as if it was some kind of predictable and periodical clock. The lack of human centric policies, human centric models and human centric methodologies that understand economics and management are only going to perpetuate the global problems we face and generate or exacerbate others that are not as apparent.

This is not only food for thought. I would gladly accept every reminder in the future to see how current this post remains. If the future has moved past tranaactions, have accepted economic costs as everything that we give up, and have long term adaptable views.

Feels good to let it out.

Dear all. As you know the world is a scary place for women, even more so in some places rather than others. I am a father of two, one is a six year old girl. I would love to find or to found / start a group or NGO or organization in general that prepares smalll girls for the hostile world without making them fearful and that shows them how they actively can improve the world for herself and other women.

Where I live, I just found awareness courses that were open to everyone. While I am not at all against this proposition, I certainly see that these courses are not aimed to the goal described above.

I have contacted local women rights groups and women activists but they either ignore me or state that what I want does not exist. I am a foreigner living in Germany.

Perhaps I am not looking well enough and these do exist? If they dont exist and you also see a value in such efforts do you have any clue how to proceed?

Pertaining to the rules and regulations. I do seek advice but I would say I have done research and reached out to organizations. Also the proposal for creativity, in my view is a high quality perspective.

They are both geniuses, they both never reach their goals and both have never really made much of a difference. Dr. Doom is just believed to be mighty in our heads but he us just as cartoonish as the coyote.