Or hook the gyms up to power generators and lets all go to the gym!
School playgrounds as well. Kids waste a lot of energy
Or hook the gyms up to power generators and lets all go to the gym!
very true!
I’ve thought that.
Well once I'm back to lifting weights I'll be on a high protein, high (complex) carb diet. At one point I was squatting 100kg, and I want to get back to that. But music has taken priority recently. I'm actually cleaning out one of my sheds and I'm going to assemble my squat rack in there and cancel my gym membership. I'm all about the conveniencejappe wrote: ↑29 Apr 2019Maybe a low carb diet could work for you as it did for me.
On low carb high fat diet since about 8 years now.
It took away my physical addiction to sugar, and the habit part went away after a couple weeks.
I now feel the same way about eating sugar as some people on high carb feel about fat, the addiction is gone so it isn't even a struggle. I would have failed any other diet that requires discipline to keep.
Regarding training: sleep with your training clothes and shoes on to minimize the startup friction for the morning jogging
And do fitness training in your home instead of a gym...least possible resistance.
Fish and birds. I wouldn't choose to buy reptile meat, but I would eat it. I had to make a decision about whether I felt it was personally morally justifiable to eat animals which probably have a high level of consciousness, and decided that I couldn't do it any more. I've read a lot on the neurology of consciousness and I'm as satisfied as I personally need to be that birds, fish and reptiles don't have the brain structures required for high levels of sentience, so I feel ok about eating them as long as they weren't mistreated. But mammals, I just can't do it any more.
I've actually often though the same. There are lots of things we do as people that could generate* energy but is not harnessed. It's a bit of a shame the whole "wearable" electronics thing didn't really take off, as it had potential for generating power from people's body movements.
Fish and birds. I wouldn't choose to buy reptile meat, but I would eat it. I had to make a decision about whether I felt it was personally morally justifiable to eat animals which probably have a high level of consciousness, and decided that I couldn't do it any more. I've read a lot on the neurology of consciousness and I'm as satisfied as I personally need to be that birds, fish and reptiles don't have the brain structures required for high levels of sentience, so I feel ok about eating them as long as they weren't mistreated. But mammals, I just can't do it any more..
I get you. I didn’t want to shed it either. eventually that anger turned into frustration, and then acceptance as I guess I’ve just become cynical.mashers wrote: ↑29 Apr 2019I don't think I want to shed it. It's driving my art. So although I'm fucking angry about it, I'm writing a LOT which is inspired by it. So it's a good thing. And if my reaction to this stuff makes some people second guess their beliefs, then that's a good thing.guitfnky wrote: ↑28 Apr 2019I was going to write a long, drawn-out response about how you’ll (probably) eventually be able to shed that sense of obligation—it’s something I’ve felt strongly, and often, myself, in the past. instead, I’ll just say this. take comfort in knowing you’re right (you are). it may end up being your only solace. if it doesn’t, and people actually do start to take their duty to reality and rational thought seriously, all the better.
Actually I have ruled them out too, but I wouldn't choose to eat them anyway so didn't think to mention it. But yeah, they explore, play, and learn to solve problems through trial and error. Clearly that is an animal with a mind.
Interesting, I have been pondering birds a lot. I agree that some birds appear to show higher order intelligence (e.g. strategic fighting, delaying gratification, complex ritualistic behaviour), but I don't believe the same can be said about a chicken. I've spent time observing their behaviour and it seems as though they are more instinctual than birds of prey. I think that's what sets the prey birds apart from others, even smaller prey birds.
I can't accept that fish have a mind. I haven't seen any behaviour which leads me to believe they are conscious in the same way a mammal is.
Well they don't have a brain, only a generalised ganglion network. So I definitely cannot accept that they have anything even approaching awareness.
I certainly think that anthropomorphism plays a big role. Animals with non-verbal communication similar (or comprehensible) to humans will be assumed to be more similar to humans in terms of their emotions and their consciousness. But it's clearly more complicated than that. For me, I think the clincher is curiosity. If you are curious about something, it suggests a desire for knowledge and understanding. And in order to have that desire, you have to recognise the thing you are curious about as distinct from yourself, which in turn requires that you have some sense of self. Many animals react primarily in fear to things they do not recognise, but some (like most mammals and some birds) will actually explore something even if it is potentially dangerous. Look at manta ray, sharks and other large fish species, which will approach divers and dance and play with them. It certainly isn't a survival instinct driving that behaviour, as it would be in the animal's survival instincts to keep away. But they don't - they swim over, have a look, interact a bit, then swim off. We can never really know of course - they might just be sniffing the divers out to see how tasty they are, and then decide they're not worth it and leave them alone. That could all be instinctual. But I choose to believe that they are an animal with a mind that is curious. And I can't eat an animal that can do that.plaamook wrote: ↑29 Apr 2019I eat everything but I don’t get how people arrive at their conclusions about the consciousness hierarchy. No one wants to eat dogs cause we like dogs.
Fish don’t have eyebrows so they’re screwed but the fishing industry is barbaric beyond description.
And chicken farming? I can’t believe that even legal though chickens don’t seem very bright. Crows are very bright. Maybe there’s a misunderstanding about chickens too.
I try to turn it into curiosity. Much of ways in which people interact and structure societies and their lives is so strange to me. This is just one of many aspects of human behaviour and thinking that I simply do not understand at all. So I want to explore it and write about it. Most of my songs are my attempts to rationalise something which appears irrational. So it's good for me to get pissed off about this stuff
Well, I spend a lot of time underwater so I'm gonna argue against that but at the end of the day if something can experience fear and pain then it experiences fear and pain.
Well, you know that it responds to what we would describe as fear and pain, but you don't know it is experiencing it. You don't know whether it has sentience, a sense of self, a conscious awareness that it is an entity which is experiencing fear and pain. The brain structures which are believed to provide those experiences in mammals don't exist in non-mammalian life. Of course it is possible that other parts of a fish/bird/reptile brain do that, but in a brain so small I would find that difficult to accept without some really robust empirical evidence.
Well, it shows it is able to learn through conditioning. But there are many forms of life which can do that, including caterpillars. I certainly wouldn't consider a caterpillar conscious though. As I said earlier, I would refuse to eat members of non-mammalian families if they demonstrated behaviours which strongly suggested consciousness. That would need to be more than learning through conditioning (at least from my own viewpoint).plaamook wrote: ↑29 Apr 2019A new born mamal can't conceptualise its own suffering but you don't want to hurt it. A human new born doesn't even know the things in front of its face are its own hands and yet look at how emotional people get over abortion laws. So if an adult shark or tuna or wrass is capable of learning from its expereince on any level and running from danger or discerning anything at all about it's environment it's at least that switched on, right?
Sheep are interesting, and would probably be the mammal I would feel most comfortable eating. They certainly appear to be functioning more in terms of stimulus/response rather than "thinking" per se, at least judging by their behaviour.
I had actually never considered that talking to plants may have a beneficial effect due to the CO2 emissionsstratatonic wrote: ↑30 Apr 2019I talk to the plants here. They seem to like it and thrive. Though I suspect it's just the CO2 that I'm breathing out.
Is Natural Selection clearly immoral?mashers wrote: ↑30 Apr 2019I am ambivalent about the whole "humans are a cancer" thing. We're animals which are so well adapted to the environment that we are basically unstoppable. I can see how that could be looked at as either a cancer which probably shouldn't be there (at least in the numbers we are), but also as just another form of life which is doing what life does - surviving. I kind of vacillate between these two viewpoints and haven't been able to find a compromise yet. I'm leaning more towards the former, as there are lots of things humans do which are damaging to the environment but which are not necessary for our survival, but just make it more convenient at the needless expense of other forms of life. Which is clearly immoral.
I wasn't talking about natural selection when I said this:
Filling oceans with plastic, burying non-biodegradable waste in the ground, cutting down thousands of hectares of rainforests and countless other things we do have absolutely nothing to do with natural selection. We will not fail on a species-wide level to reproduce if we stop doing these things. It will just make our lives a bit less comfortable.
We?mashers wrote: ↑30 Apr 2019I wasn't talking about natural selection when I said this:
Filling oceans with plastic, burying non-biodegradable waste in the ground, cutting down thousands of hectares of rainforests and countless other things we do have absolutely nothing to do with natural selection. We will not fail on a species-wide level to reproduce if we stop doing these things. It will just make our lives a bit less comfortable.
I agree with all this but I still 'love' nature. Nature in the sense of the entire universe is amazing to me and I consider myself priveliged in that I can even see it. Conceptualise it.bxbrkrz wrote: ↑30 Apr 2019We are all sinners, all destroyers. All polluters. All the time. As soon as we breathe. Until our death. That is our Nature. You should not be conflicted about your Nature. Embrace it instead. Why? because our Nature was created by Nature. As long as you are connected to a grid of any kind you are contributing to not loving Nature. As I am.
Yes, we. I did not claim to exempt myself from the points I made. I am guilty of the things I described. That’s why I said “we”. This does not affect my argument in any way whatsoever.
To be precise, it is the theory of evolution by natural selection. Of course feelings don’t matter in terms of the biology of it. But as a species we’ve evolved a bit beyond that, and feelings absolutely do play a part. Though the direction of causality isn’t in the direction you tried to make out I had implied.
I am making small changes every day to try to do my part. I have compressed my work week down to three days (at a pay cut) so I don’t drive as much. I scrapped my diesel car and bought an unleaded car. I no longer eat mammals. I avoid buying anything with plastic unless absolutely necessary. I recycle and reuse absolutely everything I can. I leave my heating off as much as possible. I have added insulation to my house to keep it warmer. I am starting to grow my own vegetables. I am about to invest in having solar panels on my roof. I downsized to a tiny house so there’s less to heat. I am prepared to sacrifice more. It’s a gradual process.
Well I agree apart from the “sinners” part, as I do not believe in the concept of “sin” and do not consider it relevant to this subject.
I don’t agree. We are not just animals driven to consume. We have an extremely evolved level of consciousness and are able to think, plan, extrapolate and make decisions far in advance. That means we are far from animals able to act only in our nature. On the contrary, we are able to act in ways which go against our nature for the benefit of others and/or our environment. Saying “I was made this way, it’s in my nature to destroy and pollute, I’m just going to embrace it” is making excuses for not wanting to decide to be better.
The poorest among us can't afford to move from a low-income housing unit to a nice and cute custom made tiny house for people with 1.5 children.mashers wrote: ↑30 Apr 2019Yes, we. I did not claim to exempt myself from the points I made. I am guilty of the things I described. That’s why I said “we”. This does not affect my argument in any way whatsoever.
To be precise, it is the theory of evolution by natural selection. Of course feelings don’t matter in terms of the biology of it. But as a species we’ve evolved a bit beyond that, and feelings absolutely do play a part. Though the direction of causality isn’t in the direction you tried to make out I had implied.
I am making small changes every day to try to do my part. I have compressed my work week down to three days (at a pay cut) so I don’t drive as much. I scrapped my diesel car and bought an unleaded car. I no longer eat mammals. I avoid buying anything with plastic unless absolutely necessary. I recycle and reuse absolutely everything I can. I leave my heating off as much as possible. I have added insulation to my house to keep it warmer. I am starting to grow my own vegetables. I am about to invest in having solar panels on my roof. I downsized to a tiny house so there’s less to heat. I am prepared to sacrifice more. It’s a gradual process.
Well I agree apart from the “sinners” part, as I do not believe in the concept of “sin” and do not consider it relevant to this subject.
I don’t agree. We are not just animals driven to consume. We have an extremely evolved level of consciousness and are able to think, plan, extrapolate and make decisions far in advance. That means we are far from animals able to act only in our nature. On the contrary, we are able to act in ways which go against our nature for the benefit of others and/or our environment. Saying “I was made this way, it’s in my nature to destroy and pollute, I’m just going to embrace it” is making excuses for not wanting to decide to be better.
I agree of course. 100%plaamook wrote: ↑30 Apr 2019I agree with all this but I still 'love' nature. Nature in the sense of the entire universe is amazing to me and I consider myself priveliged in that I can even see it. Conceptualise it.bxbrkrz wrote: ↑30 Apr 2019We are all sinners, all destroyers. All polluters. All the time. As soon as we breathe. Until our death. That is our Nature. You should not be conflicted about your Nature. Embrace it instead. Why? because our Nature was created by Nature. As long as you are connected to a grid of any kind you are contributing to not loving Nature. As I am.
I don't want to destroy it but I also don't want to live like a cave man, as if that was even possible.
I don't see that embracing what we are, in spite of it;s hopefully short term down sides, requires a fuck it all approach. We can do both. We should try at least. We don't have to destroy everything in order to live comfortasbly.
One things for probably for sure, if we fail the only things that will care about our failiure is ourslves. Unlikely anything else conceptualises global melt down like we do. The rest will just die in the usual fashion. And everything will certainly die with or without our intervention
You asked me what changes I'm making, and I told you. Of course not everyone can make those same changes. What do you expect me to say or do about that? The fact that some people can't afford to make those changes doesn't mean they don't need to be made for the sake of the planet.
Exactly.mashers wrote: ↑01 May 2019You asked me what changes I'm making, and I told you. Of course not everyone can make those same changes. What do you expect me to say or do about that? The fact that some people can't afford to make those changes doesn't mean they don't need to be made for the sake of the planet.
I've been thinking a lot about this since reading your response. I think you're right in some cases, maybe even a large number, where for some there is literally nothing they can change in their lifestyle due to being of such limited resources. But I think that for some, this becomes an excuse. I realise this isn't always the case, but I think even in the situations you described earlier on, there are changes that could be made. I'm not from the US, but I would assume that the McDonald's menus are similar. Here in the UK we have a 99p menu, and there are chicken and vegetarian options. So even if somebody is relying on McDonald's for all their food, I think there are options available. Also, I would question whether relying on 99p/$1 menus is really cost-effective. Assuming three meals a day, that's £2.97 per day. That works out at £20.79 per week. Currently, I spend about £40 per MONTH on food. So eating at McDonalds every day is double the price. Eating a non-mammal diet on a budget is pretty easy to be honest. You just keep things simple. My diet consists mainly of oats, bread, cheese, poultry ham, eggs, fresh chicken and fish, and fresh and dried fruits. Because I eat pretty much the same thing most days, it's easy to just buy as much as I need for the week and stick to it. It's not only cheap, but I feel more ethical as they are simpler foods which aren't excessively processed.
I don't know about amazing. I wish I could do more. But I'm trying to be a better inhabitant while I'm here, for whatever good it will do.
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