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Do you believe world peace is attainable?

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by London'sBurning, Oct 19, 2019.

  1. London'sBurning

    London'sBurning Contributing Member

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    I like my fair share of Sci-Fi and one of the things I enjoyed most from Roddenberry's vision of Star Trek was that world peace was achieved and that it lead to far greater goals like exploring the galactic neighborhood around us. I haven't watched every series of the franchise or read "canon" books that explain the Star Trek universe in greater detail to have an answer to this question I'm about to ask. Did they ever explain how world peace was achieved in the Star Trek universe? And that leads to the next question. Not even making it happen in your lifetime a requisite, do you see humanity collectively come together across the globe with answers to it's present day problems?

    Slavery is at an all time low historically in human history, yet it's not completely absent. Wars do still ravage regions of this globe for various motivations enough to state that world peace is far from an honest declaration. World hunger is still a concern as are squalor living conditions for billions in overpopulated regions of this Earth and the list of issues humans across the globe face could go on and on. That said, do you think at any point in human history that world peace can be achieved?

    If so, how? If not, why? Further, if you do think world peace can be achieved, what is your Utopian vision of world peace? What is life like for the average person in this Utopian world peace society? Is the vision of world for your average African for instance that different from the life of a North American in this world peace future?

    If you think humanity is ****ed, what do you see as the tipping point for us where we as a species go extinct?
     
  2. Amiga

    Amiga I get vaunted sacred revelations from social media
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    I don’t know but always assumed technology. With the Holodeck and replicator, what’s there to fight about anymore?
     
  3. larsv8

    larsv8 Contributing Member

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  4. dachuda86

    dachuda86 Member

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  5. malakas

    malakas Member

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    Of course.

    If there is an alien invasion or a zombie apocalypse that is.
     
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  6. London'sBurning

    London'sBurning Contributing Member

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    I mean that makes sense to me. Technology improving enough where you can perform feats like that would probably a be good indicator you've solved humanity's biggest problems on Earth. A machine that can instantly make your favorite prepared dish almost instantaneously would solve world hunger if it was accessible to everyone. A little medical scanner you can just gloss over the body to diagnose and repair illnesses again would be another major feat. I guess it's a silly question to pose understanding that in the Star Trek universe you can go FTL without it killing people aboard the vehicle including the other feats humans in the show treat casually that would be groundbreaking if achieved in present day.

    That said, there still would have had to have been a breakthrough in human history for even one of those technological feats to even be feasible. I wonder what the breakthrough was. Was it designing a cost efficient vehicle for space travel / mining rare earth metals in our solar system (like the Expanse universe) thereby allowing materials engineers to make more of whatever material that was a groundbreaking discovery for something like a replicator or holodeck? What world leaders at the time decided to collectively come to peace terms and what were the motivations ultimately?

    Why not? What do you see as the impossible obstacles to overcome for humanity to collectively get it's **** together?
     
  7. dobro1229

    dobro1229 Contributing Member

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    It’s achievable but unfortunately it’ll take a global catastrophe to bring whoever survives to realize they are on the same team.

    As a species we are incredibly tribal, and self destructive in nature. The self destructive part I truly believe in. Speaking of good sci if, if you haven’t yet seen the movie Annihilation, def check that out. I think it’s mostly in our nature to self destruct. Whether it be just simply eating sh$tty food when we know it’s killing us, or someone as ominous as climate change threatening our world when the science is as conclusive as it gets, we have it in our nature to make our existence difficult.

    And that includes violence and war. It’s part of our nature. But we also have the need and capacity for love and community. I think the journey of conflict between the human heart and the human mind is the story of humanity. It’s inevitable that at least in this phase of our story as humans, peace is not in the equation until the very end of this chapter of our evolution.
     
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  8. Amiga

    Amiga I get vaunted sacred revelations from social media
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    That was more of a joke then being serious :).

    Depending on human to self evolved away from conflict is going to take a long long time, longer then when the sun goes bye bye. Based on that, practically no, there won’t be peace. If there is one, it’s short lived. During and after a disaster, we have witness people let down their guards and individual needs to come together, as a cohesive unit. It always short lived and we revolve back to our nature - individuals. Even if we have all ours basic needs met, we will still fight over something - the meaning of life, the afterlife.

    I think world peace is only possible after individuality is no longer primary, however that is possible from mutation to technology.
     
  9. rocketsjudoka

    rocketsjudoka Contributing Member
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    From what I remember world peace was only achieve in the Star Trek universe after a century of warfare starting with economic collapse in the late 20th century and then the eugenics war. Before the discovery of warp drive in the late 21st Century there was a nuclear war. Even then peace didn't come about until warp drive and first contact with Vulcans.
     
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  10. London'sBurning

    London'sBurning Contributing Member

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    It's one of the best Sci-Fi horror movies to come out in recent memory and the design of the alien to be opposite of any anthropomorphic design or motivation was truly well done. It's amazing to me how Hollywood always manages to have a bipedal alien with hands, feet and other human physiological traits and this movie's interpretation of an alien is a fractal acid trip. The dialogue preceding that scene explaining that the alien had no motivations that we could interpret on a human level was also well done. This is echoing Red Letter Media's review of the movie, but this should have been the STEM mostly female cast movie that Hollywood pushed the Ghostbusters remake to be. It's a shame it didn't do well in the box office.


    I think it can be achieved and will happen at some point in the future. I think it'll largely come from a government push to space exploration and ultimately mining rare earth metals, to make it economically viable. For instance, it's estimated that there is a large supply of Helium-3 on the moon. Helium-3 is theorized to be a viable method of generating nuclear fusion instead of fission, which is how we operate nuclear power plants. This energy source if viable enough to replace existing ones we use today, could be the revolutionary push towards a new untapped economy that could pave the way to inventions we can only imagine right now.

    If you go through human history and the accidental discovery of materials that we use in our everyday lives, I think it's only inevitable that some lucky experimenter will uncover some new material that can give engineers in their respected fields something to design that will only advance us further towards new discoveries we can use to benefit ourselves.

    It's my hope that AI doesn't in fact take over but does become an everyday assistant to make up for the shortage of medical professionals for instance that can diagnose and treat illnesses across the globe. Perhaps if a 500 qubit quantum computers are ever invented, some scientific mysteries that would take the the full processing power and lifetime of the universe to answer, could be done exponentially faster.
    If achieved, I imagine AI quantum computers that can analyze complex data from urinalysis, fecal samples, dead skin cell samples, drawn blood, hair samples, analyze PET and fMRI scans and be able to diagnose and come up with treatments faster and more accurately than a medically trained professional. And these types of machines becoming economically viable to where it's affordable for most humans in the world over a period of decades after it's invention. Maybe not quite a Star Trek remote that you can gloss over someone to heal them, but certainly an improvement from how healthcare operates now and one that I could see feasibly achieved within the next 200 to 300 years, if not sooner.
     
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  11. pirc1

    pirc1 Contributing Member

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    not under current condition.
     
  12. cml750

    cml750 Member

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    Certainly. It is not a matter of if but WHEN.
     
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  13. justtxyank

    justtxyank Contributing Member

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    Most fictional portrayals of world peace as well as the biblical future world peace follow a horrible period of violence and destruction never seen before.

    it’s possible. Millions dead, total economic collapse...possible I guess that eventually a peaceful society would emerge.

    I tend to think not though. I think dystopian writers are more likely on target that collapse of society would lead to strongman types dominating.


    Who knows though. Maybe we’ll find out. We are moving towards economic crisis globally, the world super power is becoming less democratic
     
  14. dobro1229

    dobro1229 Contributing Member

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    Which is the most interesting point that goes to my point about our nature of self destruction.

    If we wanted to we could figure out what those conditions would be to bring about peace, but would we do it even if it was obvious and easy to accomplish?

    We make decisions on a daily basis small and large that are counterproductive to our survival. If we could easily created the conditions for peace would people choose to implement? History shows that it’s unlikely that we make that decision which is inherently as simple as choosing to eat a salad and go to the gym instead of eating Chick Fil A and bing watching all three John Wick movies.
     
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  15. Deckard

    Deckard Blade Runner
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    For a possible outcome that looks increasingly on target, I would suggest everyone read a Hugo winning science fiction novel of the near future by Paolo Bacigalupi, The Windup Girl. It is a great read, frightening as hell, and certain aspects of the novel are becoming far too likely.
     
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  16. rockbox

    rockbox Around before clutchcity.com

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    I do not think world peace is attainable but I think the days of foreign wars between first world countries are are over. I don't think we will be over civil unrest/wars and regional conflicts.
     
  17. B-Bob

    B-Bob "94-year-old self-described dreamer"

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    We would have to grapple with our deeply imbedded Dunbar Number (comfortable knowing about 150 people). If there is a way of organizing ourselves that honors that, maybe it could work. I don’t want to rule it out, but I don’t hear anyone really working on this at all. People alternately trusting “the market” or authoritarians to figure everything out.
     
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  18. amaru

    amaru Member

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    With the extinction of our species
     
  19. Space Ghost

    Space Ghost Contributing Member

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    As long as anyone has an opinion, there will never be peace. Greed and selfishness is what drives our species and advancement.
     
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  20. Amiga

    Amiga I get vaunted sacred revelations from social media
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    I go back to individualism. Part of that problem is communication. People can't read your mind, you can't read other and you are essentially isolated. The natural human interface is limited and can work well only within a small closed knitted group(s). It's a cruel communication that is slow and hard to understand - we got laws to try to standardize some languages and even that is up to interpretation.

    I'm more hopeful that the brain to machine interface Musk is working on succeed, is commercialized and is available to the open community and innovation through it allows the gap of communication to be closed. Interweb of human to human connection. Individualism exists, but is no longer primary. Yes, this is sci-fi stuff.
     

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