Could we Change if We had To?

No need for a long thread and I'll wait to comment as the thread rolls on.




If aliens showed up in the morning, and all " day the world stood still" style promise distruction if we don't :

Stop with the wars

Swap to renewables

Stop with the industrial scale pollution


Could we do it?


(This is assuming they are so obviously more technologically advanced then us. That we don't doubt they could get the job done.)

a reply to: Entreri06

Good question , no . Catholics would convince themselves he was god , Isis Allah so on and so forth . We would be doomed . But given time and a few countries disappearing yes . Thats not an option in the OP though . I for one havent done any of the above , perhaps i could get a leave pass .

originally posted by: hutch622
a reply to: Entreri06

Good question , no . Catholics would convince themselves he was god , Isis Allah so on and so forth . We would be doomed . But given time and a few countries disappearing yes . Thats not an option in the OP though . I for one havent done any of the above , perhaps i could get a leave pass .

You haven't had a gun to your head and told to either!! :p



I think we could. If cost wasn't an issue there isn't much we couldn't do.... Here's the kicker. Cost isn't real! Labor is real, materials are real, know how is real. Money is a lie we tell ourselves. If we really had to get something done and money was no object... We could swap to solar in a year!

a reply to: Entreri06

Yes but you stated a day . Or did i read that wrong , its kinda confusing .

Threats don't work. I assume an alien race would offer help not destruction. Otherwise they are no better than us with better tech.

originally posted by: hutch622
a reply to: Entreri06

Yes but you stated a day . Or did i read that wrong , its kinda confusing .

My bad meant "day the earth stood still". With Keanu, where he was the alien emissary that was gonna destroy humanity if we didn't stop wrecking the planet.

originally posted by: Metallicus
Threats don't work. I assume an alien race would offer help not destruction. Otherwise they are no better than us with better tech.

I don't know... I think a "no question" threat like that would do it.

a reply to: Entreri06

Ofc we could do it.. I live in scotland here we are about 70% renewable if you have come that far the rest is not so hard. look ar germany they are going to be 100% renewable. The tech is now here to do it... We just have want the change

purp.

Absolutely, and we would win.

But once we won our freedom back, we'd go back to our old ways. Our nature is fundamentally flawed.

a reply to: Entreri06

Actually, we are seeing the results exactly now! the major powers know that the ETs are here. And with the visibility of the triangles over much of the US over the last three decades, we can guess that we have similar high-tech devices as UFOs.

Everybody always ignores or discounts the social intelligence of the ETs. The Rose Garden landing is a stupid, self-serving myth that stems from us thinking we are going to be treated as equals in any encounter. We are being played according to their knowledge of how we tend to operate. We are being allowed to change our behaviors according to stern dictates from on-high: Change or else.

That Muslim business all across the Middle-East is a festering sore that must be, er, solved, in some fashion even if drastically, so that the world can get down to the better business of becoming less aggressive in general and living within its means in a sensible manner within a practical, sustainable relationship with our planet.

Ancient history from India clearly shows that the "gods" from above were not above using warfare among humans to bring about changes in the direction of a society. Expect to see the UN, and principally the Western world, committing itself to making the ME conform to acceptable standards of decent human behavior.

The coming great war will not be a religious war, but a war against religion. Many cannot see the distinction, and that will cause much consternation in the West to those that have a religion.

All this time and we are still using the most profitable energy sources, not the best for us or the planet. Seeing as how we keep doing things for money and power and not what we should do to make this a better place for us all, the answer is no.Aliens come down with an alternative power source and the big boys would fight to see who's first in line to make a deal and get the rights to charge us out the ass for it.

originally posted by: DAVID64
All this time and we are still using the most profitable energy sources, not the best for us or the planet. Seeing as how we keep doing things for money and power and not what we should do to make this a better place for us all, the answer is no.Aliens come down with an alternative power source and the big boys would fight to see who's first in line to make a deal and get the rights to charge us out the ass for it.

Actually I'm thinking, what if they don't help. Just post up in orbit and broadcast a signal telling us what time it is.

So in this senerio we have to do it ourselves.

a reply to: Entreri06

Well, I only involve myself in use of fossil fuels because to do otherwise would be to cut myself off from the people I love, none of whom seem capable, or in the least interested in living an old fashioned life. Me personally, I could live in a box, cave, dugout, crack in a rock, under a bridge or pretty much anywhere I like, without having much of an impact on anything at all.

As for war, no activity that resembles war is justified, unless one group threatens all humanity, as was the case with the Nazis, and as has NEVER been the case since. Its that simple. So I could live very well without all that.

But I could not do more than SURVIVE like that, because as previously mentioned, the other people in my life could NOT deal with it as well as I could, and have in times past for that matter. Since these are the people who make getting up in the morning, rather than drifting into the netherplace in my sleep, seem worth the effort, if it came to the choice, I would have to seek a way to defy the alien. Besides, right or wrong though they may be, no one has the right to tell me how I may, and may not act. We have the law, and that is enough of an assault on my liberty. I will take that crap from the people with whom I share a planet, to a degree, but if anyone came into my home, and told me what I may and may not do inside it, I would have to hit them so hard that their childrens children were knocked unconscious!

Why they would be so interested in the welfare of a planet they don't live on?

But if they were, they'd just ask us to stop breeding for ten years or so.

a reply to: Entreri06

No....I don't think so. This world as a whole agrees on nothing....we'd have to be "forced" into change.

I don't think we would even attempt to stop- I think it's more likely that we'd all set aside our differences just long enough to unite and fight for the right to go back to being divided and killing each other- even if we had no prayer of winning.

We've hacked the population capacity of the planet, and we've done it unwisely. There's an ever growing amount of lives nature won't support, an ever growing amount of slack to pick up to keep them alive, and an ever-growing mess from the shortcuts we've had to take to keep up.

The only wiggle room we have left to get ahead of this problem is our freedom- either everyone admits this is a life and death situation and works full bore for no reward so everyone can stay alive, or we draw straws to see who takes the fall for our collective mistakes. And in our culture we glorify people who would risk death rather than be cornered into something resembling slavery by circumstance.

Suppose that you're in the zombie apocalypse and you can join either of two communities.

In one community, every available bit of effort goes into killing zombies- no time off, no luxuries, no raising families- the only thing anyone there ever does is make sure nobody dies. If they let you in, you will agree to work 18 hours a day every day in exchange for a bowl of gruel and a patch of dirt to sleep on, and you are guaranteed not to die.

In the other community, you will be free. They have a list of things that need doing and what you'll get for it, you can pick as much or as little of it as you want to do, and spend the rest of your time as you see fit. A lot of stuff goes unfinished there, somebody dies because of that weekly, and the zombies are slowly building up in the area, leaving some question as to whether they could eventually be overrun, lose half their people, and have to start over.

Which do you join? I think most choose the second community, and I think that's why if the aliens come down and say, "fix your stuff or die", we'll say, "we declare war on you. give us everything we need to fix our problems without any effort and we'll make peace- otherwise we're gonna nuke our whole planet, and we know that won't destroy your ships but you'll probably have to repaint them at least, so we'll do it just to spite you". We're stubborn like that.

originally posted by: Astyanax
Why they would be so interested in the welfare of a planet they don't live on?

But if they were, they'd just ask us to stop breeding for ten years or so.

In "day the earth stood still" it was because there are only a few dozen planets that can support complex life. So one very angry species isn't worth ruining one of the few habitable planets. Which seems pretty logical to me.

originally posted by: The Vagabond
I don't think we would even attempt to stop- I think it's more likely that we'd all set aside our differences just long enough to unite and fight for the right to go back to being divided and killing each other- even if we had no prayer of winning.

We've hacked the population capacity of the planet, and we've done it unwisely. There's an ever growing amount of lives nature won't support, an ever growing amount of slack to pick up to keep them alive, and an ever-growing mess from the shortcuts we've had to take to keep up.

The only wiggle room we have left to get ahead of this problem is our freedom- either everyone admits this is a life and death situation and works full bore for no reward so everyone can stay alive, or we draw straws to see who takes the fall for our collective mistakes. And in our culture we glorify people who would risk death rather than be cornered into something resembling slavery by circumstance.

Suppose that you're in the zombie apocalypse and you can join either of two communities.

In one community, every available bit of effort goes into killing zombies- no time off, no luxuries, no raising families- the only thing anyone there ever does is make sure nobody dies. If they let you in, you will agree to work 18 hours a day every day in exchange for a bowl of gruel and a patch of dirt to sleep on, and you are guaranteed not to die.

In the other community, you will be free. They have a list of things that need doing and what you'll get for it, you can pick as much or as little of it as you want to do, and spend the rest of your time as you see fit. A lot of stuff goes unfinished there, somebody dies because of that weekly, and the zombies are slowly building up in the area, leaving some question as to whether they could eventually be overrun, lose half their people, and have to start over.

Which do you join? I think most choose the second community, and I think that's why if the aliens come down and say, "fix your stuff or die", we'll say, "we declare war on you. give us everything we need to fix our problems without any effort and we'll make peace- otherwise we're gonna nuke our whole planet, and we know that won't destroy your ships but you'll probably have to repaint them at least, so we'll do it just to spite you". We're stubborn like that.

See that's why I put the stipulation that they were so ridicuously advanced we wouldn't stand a chance. That way it's obvious that attacking them is suicide and the only options are change or extinction.

a reply to: Entreri06

That's why I put in the point about we'd nuke our whole planet just to scratch their paint. If you take away a person's right to live on their own terms then they will die on their own terms. And our terms seem to be something like, "Life isn't good enough, so if you want me not to die, what's in it for me?".

originally posted by: Metallicus
Threats don't work. I assume an alien race would offer help not destruction. Otherwise they are no better than us with better tech.

But why do we assume they would be better than us? Is it just wishful thinking?

We have existed for a pretty long time, and we still fight wars over pathetically stupid things, we still squabble to death attempting to impose religious beliefs or political will on each other, and yet we're currently sending tech out to other planets and will probably be going further than we've ever gone before in the next 50 years.

I think it's naive to believe that an alien race would be peaceful, just because they have developed advanced space travel.

Were the white Europeans more peaceful than the Natives of any land they arrived to conquer in their modern ships?

Are we any more peaceful than the only untouched tribe found on Earth in the last five years?

Given all the information we have about our own race and history, and the fact that every other species on the planet has a predator apart from us, I think it's far more plausible that any race arriving here from space would either find us irrelevant (treat us like animals/insects) or want to conquer us for their own gain.

I might just be cynical, but as we only have our own history to go by, it makes more sense to assume that the arrival of a more advanced race would not be a peaceful and pleasant experience, for us as the native species.