Horizon Road

I am not at all into politics. In fact, I generally dislike politics and politicians alike and try to stay away from making any political postings in my blog because of this fact. But I needed to post the fact that I am supporting Obama and he will get my vote for the presidency because of a couple of earlier, less informed short posts I had written (despite my personal political writing policy) and then removed after discovering my errors in them.

And I will say no more about politics. I still hate our entire political system and the criminals that use it to serve themselves more than they serve the people that elect them, but I have been convinced that Obama is different, and for that reason alone, he gets my vote because someone completely different from anyone we’ve had in charge in our lifetime is the only way this country has a chance, and even then, only a slim chance. If we get another Bush or Clinton or Ford or Reagan, (or McCain) or anyone who has been part of the political system for the last two or three decades, the countdown to self-destruction continues.

At least with Obama, I see a slim chance to change directions. And for that slim chance, he gets my vote.

The true fact is, this entire world is becoming Hell because there are just too many people anymore. Obama has a chance for change, a slim chance, but I don’t actually believe the world will allow him to make the changes necessary. The only thing that is going to allow our (human) race to survive into the next century will be a natural disaster (I would never hope for an unnatural disaster) that wipes out at least three quarters of the world population and allows those that are left to start over and try to get it right the second (or third or fourth, do we really, truly know?) time around.

Otherwise, in a few more centuries, survivors will wonder about the existence of a country in the middle of the ocean that was supposedly once called “The United States of America” much the same way we wonder about Atlantis. I hear they tried to conquer the world…and look what it got them.

The world of today seems to be heading for the same fate as Atlantis. But why should any politicians care about that? They’ll be long dead by then.

Gotta keep up with the times. Facebook is apparently the place to be these days if you want people to find you on the Internet. I’m not sure exactly what the advantages are yet having just joined this morning, but I suppose I gotta try to keep up.

I have a little phone that takes pictures, shoots movies, connects to the web, and God only knows what else it is capable of. I just answer it when it rings and use it to store a few phone numbers and to call people when I need to talk to them. You know, the things a phone does. I guess I probably use about as much of its capabilities as we do our brains’…6% or so.

The computer languages I was being taught when I started school almost three years ago were outdated and often obsolete by the time I tried to apply them in the real world two years later. To keep up, most of the learning had to be done immediately after the schooling was over and has not stopped or slowed down since.

The world is moving so fast around us, it sometimes gets difficult to keep up. I think I heard a few million people had joined Facebook now. Hard to believe anyone would be any easier to find anymore as the numbers continue to rapidly grow. It seems even in Facebook already, one would just be another face in the crowd as the world continues its historical accelerated population explosion of the last half century.

Hard to imagine how anyone will be able find anyone using any type of medium in about 50 years if the trend continues. If the world continues moving so fast, like everything else, it will simply wear out, get used up, cease to function.

Every few hundred years, it seems, the world goes through drastic changes. We’ve labeled them as eras, or ages. With each new era, progress and change have been predominately world wide. I can feel another one those “eras” reaching a climax.

How many more people can the world and its resources handle? How much faster can we progress before we start leaving more behind than can keep up.

Maybe we’ll find out December 21, 2012. Maybe the Mayas were more in the know than we give them credit for because they were from an era less advanced technologically than ours. Maybe. Maybe not. Of course, they already knew many things we are still rediscovering and confirming with today’s technology.

We’re from the Era of Technology.

The Mayas were of an Era of Knowledge.

In the past few decades, we have technologically proven the Mayas were correct about many of the things they claimed as truth concerning our planet, our galaxy, and even our universe. How they came to know these truths is still a complete mystery to historians and scientists, alike. And as for the coming “end of time as we know it” the Mayas predicted to occur on precisely December 21, 2012, the scientifically proven completion of a 5,125 year seasonal cycle of our solar system, of course no one has proven them right, but then no one has been able to prove them wrong yet, either.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. But in the meantime, in a small effort to try to keep up, I joined the millions that are joining Facebook today…and became another face in the crowd once again.

Everyone wants to live a long, healthy, happy life. This is true for most people throughout the world regardless of race, religion, age, or sex. There are many organizations worldwide whose sole purpose is to help the sick, the elderly, and the impoverished to live longer and more fulfilling lives. These organizations, most governments, and just about every structured religion, all practice utilitarianism.

The main concept of utilitarianism is The Principle of Utility which states to always act in such a way that you benefit the majority and society as a whole. But if we look a little deeper into the true meaning of “benefit the majority,” and “society as a whole” while looking at the concept of utilitarianism, should we not also include the future members of society and the conditions they inherit from us? Won’t our great-great-grandchildren’s lives be affected by our actions today? Is the majority really benefiting? And who exactly is the majority?

Looking back in history, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, from the Neanderthal to the end of the 19th century, the human life span averaged between 20 and 35 years. However, since 1900, the average life span of humans has taken an incredible leap forward. In the United States, the average life span has increased from 49 to 77 years. China, the most populated country on the planet, has increased their nation’s average life span from 35 to 71 since just 1950. Likewise in India, since 1950, the average lifespan has risen from 32 to 64.

Much of this sudden increase in the human lifespan is due to medical science and a very large decline in the infant mortality rate. Other major contributors are the shrinking of the economic world, increased importing and exporting, and modern convenience and technology. And yet another major contributor to the longevity of the average life here on Earth is due to the utilitarian obligation to make all people as happy as possible.

However, if one believing in utilitarianism were to factor in this sudden surge of the population on earth, coupled with the average individual living almost twice as long as those from the previous 3000 years, and the ever increasing consumption of natural resources needed, one might start looking to the Eskimo culture where there are certain utilitarian sanctions in place that may seem to be against the ideals of other utilitarian organizations or societies.

The Eskimos, when the season requires the tribe to pull together and survive a treacherous winter, often leave their sick and elderly to die. They know that food will be in short supply. The elderly, who have already lived a full life in the eyes of their society, would be consuming food and resources that were needed by those that have not yet lived a full life. To the Eskimo, it is better to let the old and the very sick die so that the young and healthy can live more prosperously. These seemingly inhumane acts ultimately allow their society to function better, more productively, and survive into the future.

With the population increasing as rapidly as it is and people living progressively longer, more and more of the world’s natural resources are being used up. We need more room to house all these people and more resources to help them survive. We destroy more natural land, build more buildings, more towns, and consume more natural resources while forcing wildlife to relocate, or in many cases, become extinct.

So the common viewpoint of utilitarianism is an obligation to cure all disease and end hunger because it would be the “right” thing to do for the majority of the people. Yet another viewpoint might be that to truly accommodate the most people, to give the true majority of people the best chance to find happiness with their lives, the future needs to also be considered. If we continue to delay death, if we continue to take from the rainforests and destroy the land and less dominant species of the Earth in pursuit of more space and resources for the needy, we will ultimately out grow this Earth and sooner than later, no one will be able to survive happily as opposed to most of us.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that we adopt the ways of the Eskimos and start leaving our sick and elderly to die with no hope of improving their life or trying to find happiness, as is stated our most basic right in the Constitution. But maybe we can compensate in other ways. Maybe we need to be more tolerant of things like assisted suicide, abortion, mandatory capital punishment for murder and rape. Maybe we can stop helping those that do not wish to be helped.

I’m not going to pretend to have any of the answers to this growing problem here. Nor am I revealing my own take on any of the hotly debated topics of today mentioned in the previous paragraph. But I do believe this is something that needs to be noticed, considered, talked about, and debated. For if this problem is ignored, it might be too late to do anything at all about it later when our children’s children’s children are left with a depleted world where long life and happiness is no longer a right, but a rare privilege.

Here are some interesting facts about the rainforests and reasons why we should try to protect our rainforests from those destroying them. The lives of our children’s children may depend on our actions today in regards to the rainforest. After reading a few of the facts listed below, it is easy to understand how.

Tropical rainforests are located near the equator concentrated in Africa, Australia, Asia, and Central and South America. With the year-long steady temperatures due to the location on the planet and its 160 to 400 inches of rain per year, plant life is denser in the rainforests than anywhere else in the world. The Amazon Rainforest alone produces more than 20% of the world’s oxygen from all its vegetation and is sometimes referred to as the “Lungs of our Planet.”

Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth, but thanks to major logging companies, land owners, and short-sighted governments, they now cover only 6% of the planet and experts have estimated that they could vanish altogether in the next 40 years at the rate we are going.

There was once more than ten million Indians living in the Amazon Rainforest. Today there are less than 200,000. As more and more natives from the rainforests die and their numbers continue to decrease, more untapped knowledge of the benefits and uses of the resources our rainforests offer to us are forever lost.

There are an estimated 10 million species of plants, animals, and insects that live in the tropical rainforests. That’s more than half of those on the entire planet. Experts estimate that we are losing 50,000 plant, animal, and insect species every year due to rainforest deforestation for its timber value.

The Amazon Basin contains one-fifth of the world’s fresh water supply.

There are at least 3,000 fruits found in the rainforests. Only 200 of these fruits are used in the Western World while the Indians of the rainforests use more than 2,000 of them. At least 80% of the developed world’s diet originated in the tropical rainforests. Some of the fruits originally coming from the rainforests include, avocados, coconuts, figs, oranges, lemons, grapefruit, bananas, guavas, pineapples, mangoes, and tomatoes. Likewise, some of the vegetables include corn, potatoes, rice, winter squash, and yams. Spices such as black pepper, cayenne, chocolate, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and sugar cane also originated in the rainforests as well as coffee, vanilla, Brazil nuts and cashews.

3000 plants have been identified by The U.S. National Cancer Institute that can be actively used against cancer cells. 70% of these plants are found in the rainforest. More than 120 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant derived sources. 25% of those ingredients come from the rainforests and yet only 1% of the tropical trees and plants of the rainforests have been tested by scientists.

Clearing and burning rainforests releases vast amounts of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, ozone and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. Each year, deforestation contributes 23-30 percent of all carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is believed to be responsible for approximately half of global warming.

Scientists have only just begun to tap into the unending daily and medicinal usages of the plant life in the rainforests. To discover even a small percentage of what they have to offer the rest of the world will take centuries. But at the rate we are going, we only have a few decades before it will all vanish and all that untapped knowledge is lost.