Very humorous - reading further down the Wikipedia entry I came across information regarding the outlawing of Potlatches:
"Potlatching was made illegal in Canada in 1884 in an amendment to the Indian Act,[20] largely at the urging of missionaries and government agents who considered it “a worse than useless custom” that was seen as wasteful, unproductive, and contrary to ‘civilized values’ of accumulation.[21] "
Bingo.
PaulJam wrote:
... and contrary to 'civilized values' of accumulation. "
Bingo.
…I’ll just leave this here for the more spiritually minded.
Hmm, a lot of this sounds like the 10 burning man principals. While burning man is in many ways a display of energy gluttony, it’s also an interesting week in experimentation of how different society can be.
From: https://burningman.org/culture/philosophical-center/10-principles/
Radical Inclusion - Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.
Gifting - Burning Man is devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.
Decommodification - In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.
Radical Self-reliance - Burning Man encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.
Radical Self-expression - Radical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.
Communal Effort - Our community values creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.
Civic Responsibility - We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants. They must also assume responsibility for conducting events in accordance with local, state and federal laws.
Leaving No Trace - Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.
Participation - Our community is committed to a radically participatory ethic. We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play. We make the world real through actions that open the heart.
Immediacy - Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.
I suspect that are many example of cultures/groups with some of the same ideals. It just seems we have to keep rediscovering them over and over.
Grover I guess I am one. Stereotypes are just that, a label and not indicative of anything of substance. I have been trying to become more self sufficient and use less of an energy footprint every year for a very very long time. The little I have saved will not be spent on my old age. It will be handed down to my millenial generation step sons. Also my mechanical, carpentry, pipe fitting, welding, tile setting, electrical and agricultural knowledge is all available for them to pick up on if they choose so. I have tried to teach them in subtle ways so that they didn’t know they were learning something. It appears to have worked to some extent. My youngest son bought a townhouse and with a little explanation changed out all the electrical outlets and wall switches, installed new overhead lights, a dishwasher and quite a bit more. There are quite a few of us born during the boomer years that don’t own a Harley, an RV, a place in Florida or plan on having the state pick up the tab on our last days. The people of the boomer generation who got all the attention and the write ups are all that you say. Point is, they don’t represent all of us.
rhare wrote:
I suspect that are many example of cultures/groups with some of the same ideals. It just seems we have to keep rediscovering them over and over.
If you compare use of resources, it will be directly proportional to population growth.
I am not saying we should liquidate people but our planet/and its resources are finite and if we continue to increase our population, there is no way we can survive.
Or course it is hard to sell this. i.e.stop having more children than you needed to replace the parents.
And we also have certain a certain religion which sees it as a duty to have lots of children in order spread its beliefs and crowd out the other main religions.
Dwight Carlson wrote:
If you compare use of resources, it will be directly proportional to population growth.
I am not saying we should liquidate people but our planet/and its resources are finite and if we continue to increase our population, there is no way we can survive.
Or course it is hard to sell this. i.e.stop having more children than you needed to replace the parents.
And we also have certain a certain religion which sees it as a duty to have lots of children in order spread its beliefs and crowd out the other main religions.
The problem is, the only ones decreasing their birthrates are predominately countries that have the resources ( natural resources or just skills that other countries want/need) and that understand this population problem.
The countries having too many children are over crowded already, India, Pakistan; do not have a way to feed themselves, middle east etc… So telling people in the US or Europe, for example, to have less children does nothing to curtail the population in these other countries, and creates a vacume of sorts, space without people, that the overcrowded countries people flee to. So, reducing birthrates here has not helped the planet at all
mntnhousepermi wrote:
The countries having too many children are over crowded already, India, Pakistan; do not have a way to feed themselves, middle east etc.... So telling people in the US or Europe, for example, to have less children does nothing to curtail the population in these other countries, and creates a vacume of sorts, space without people, that the overcrowded countries people flee to. So, reducing birthrates here has not helped the planet at all
but not necessarily as humanely as some population planners would like. It’s all timing of course (and we seem to be doing “our best” regardless of getting help from a cataclysmic event). In the timeframe of millions of years, who knows if this could be tomorrow, 500 years from now, or never. Re: Yellowstone Supervolcano
Hot volcanic ash, rock and dust would rain down on those cities literally for weeks. In the end, it would be extremely difficult for anyone living in those communities to survive. In fact, it has been estimated that 90 percent of all people living within 600 miles of Yellowstone would be killed. Experts project that such an eruption would dump a layer of volcanic ash that is at least 10 feet deep up to 1,000 miles away, and approximately two-thirds of the United States would suddenly become uninhabitable. The volcanic ash would severely contaminate most of our water supplies, and growing food in the middle of the country would become next to impossible. In other words, it would be the end of our country as we know it today. The rest of the planet, and this would especially be true for the northern hemisphere, would experience what is known as a “nuclear winter”. An extreme period of “global cooling” would take place, and temperatures around the world would fall by up to 20 degrees. Crops would fail all over the planet, and severe famine would sweep the globe. In the end, billions could die. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-19/there-have-been-296-earthquakes...Then of course, there are always those pesky asteroids lurking about. Go NASA.
If the global population growth was immediately brought down to zero tomorrow almost everything on this planet would still be doomed. Climate change is now self-perpetuating and the resources would still be consumed at a terminal, though constant, rate. Fly over the Midwest and you see nothing but wall-to-wall farms. Some critics of the original 1972 Limits to Growth study from MIT claimed that a population of a trillion could be supported. Skyscraper farms would be a Haliburton wet dream. A 2014 update of the original study shows that its business-as-usual scenario tracks what is really happening today quite accurately:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits-to-growth-was-right-new-research-shows-were-nearing-collapse
Extrapolating that scenario out a few decades results in a very ugly scene. Have a nice day. 
skipr wrote:
If the global population growth was immediately brought down to zero tomorrow almost everything on this planet would still be doomed. Climate change is now self-perpetuating and the resources would still be consumed at a terminal, though constant, rate. Fly over the Midwest and you see nothing but wall-to-wall farms. Some critics of the original 1972 Limits to Growth study from MIT claimed that a population of a trillion could be supported. Skyscraper farms would be a Haliburton wet dream. A 2014 update of the original study shows that its business-as-usual scenario tracks what is really happening today quite accurately:
It's virtually 100% from fossil fuels (once you factor in the energy used to subsidize the building out of the nuclear, hydro and solar/wind installations).
None of these so-called critics has ever proposed where they are going to scare up 80 quadrillion BTUs from 'somewhere else.' They just magically appear for them, same as energy has always done for them. It's a distinctly childlike view of the world.
A theme park of fantasy fulfillment.
Thanks for the post AKGranny… just more nonsense from our, “new” educational practices,
The child kept asking questions, wanting to know why and learn more about the subject which was disruptive and was therefore they were considered a problem.I forget where I read this or who was recounting it... but it has always stuck with me; I was reading through an interview with a really smart, incisive person, and they said that when they were a kid in school, their father would not ask them what they learned in school that day, rather they would ask their kid, "what questions did you ask in school today?". Indeed.