• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Would you want to start over?

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
Humanity is "an infestation of carbon based life forms", and we keep getting started over and keep messing up. Given the choice, I would not want to start over if an adult is not in the house. Failing that, I'd rather die and go down a black hole.
When have we ever been "started over?" What does this mean that we have been "started over?"
 

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
How about altering the human psyche? We're not wired to live in large, specialized, multicultural groups, or to think long-term. We're aggressive, impulsive, tribal apes.
I think people can handle specialization better than we're given credit for (the problem more seems is having to settle for something to specialize in rather than specializing in our skills and passions). I also don't think we're incapable of living in large groups or multicultural groups. Multiculturalism has, more or less, always existed and had positive and negative outcomes of many different types for all involved (it tends to depend on many things as to whether or not it will be friendly or hostile), and our societies have constantly been getting bigger and bigger. For those who lived during that time, Babylon and Mesopotamia were massive cities. They would be pretty small to us today, but will the Tokyo, LA, and New York of today still be considered massive by the standards in 1000 years from now? Rome and the Vatican, they didn't shrink, the rest of the world continued to get bigger.
 

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
Got kicked out of the Garden of Eden. Noah's Ark and the flood, 40 years hiking in the desert, rebuilding Jerusalem how many times? There are more ...
Those are religious stories, representing the traditional beliefs and histories of the Hebrew people.
 

Epic Beard Man

Bearded Philosopher
Best exterminate us. We're a planetary infection of a virulence never before seen in the planet's history.

I don't get people with this mindset....Who are you to desire my death? I've done nothing to harm this entire planet and actively take steps to try and maintain a healthy balance between my space and the earth.
 

Epic Beard Man

Bearded Philosopher
No, I would not. I'd much rather figure out how to get ourselves out of the mess we are in on our own.

For one thing, with my asthma, I would almost certainly die if we went back to basics.

The problem according to some scholars is the damage is already done. Some have suggested a massive genocide. Some say even changing our ways only slows the inevitable.
 

Epic Beard Man

Bearded Philosopher
No. If they have advanced tech, they could instead help us build tech that do not pollute, and thus resolve the problem.


PLOT TWIST!

What if they have in the form of Jesus or other incredible thinkers, prophets, pioneers, but we killed them off and laughed off their beliefs. In the movie Klaatu (the alien) believes human nature is unchangeable? We have shown that we war over the most significant things like race, religion, and people laughed them off.
 

Epic Beard Man

Bearded Philosopher
Humanity is "an infestation of carbon based life forms", and we keep getting started over and keep messing up. Given the choice, I would not want to start over if an adult is not in the house. Failing that, I'd rather die and go down a black hole.

Very dark is this thought
 

Epic Beard Man

Bearded Philosopher
This is a tried and true sci-fi trope. It usually goes one of two ways:

Sci-Fi 1, a return to Ludditism happens at the end of the story, but fails to describe massive, catastrophic damage to survivors who by in large don't know how to function in a pre-industrial world, no matter how much they think they do. There's a reason life expectancy is so dramatically poor in pre-industrialized nations. It's not because they're stupid, it's because manufacturing the tools needed for living off the land by hand with only regional materials is hard and dangerous work, one most people didn't survive long. Instead of a realistic outlook, it just fades to black after the decision to abandon technology. (Battlestar Galactica comes to mind)

Sci-Fi 2, the story is about being forcibly displaced into a pre-industrial world (aftermath of a disaster story). The protagonist calls for cooperation towards making a better world, only to find that a scared, lost and struggling humanity on survival instincts turns even more sharply towards tribalism. The civil framework which kept tyranny of the masses at bay is gone, replaced by the biases of whatever group manages to seize power. The rest of the story ends up being about how humanity ends up being worse than their attackers since they turn on each other with more cruelty than the initial threat ever was. (Pretty much every zombie story, a good deal of Stephen King stories, post-apocolyptic genre writing)

The best case scenario is where said aliens use their technology to save humanity, not by taking away human technology, but advancing it in a sustainable direction. (Re: Star Trek)

Edit: Also, had a thought.
Sci-Fi 3, Modest Proposal story. Where someone brings about or agrees with a disaster scenario and accepts staggering losses for the 'greater good,' even though it's never made expressly clear that the results of the sacrifice of others will actually lead to a 'greater good' instead of more of the same. (The Thanos Gambit.)


How come people don't like to stick with the scenario? Geez is it that hard? For once It would be nice to see if folks expand on the scenario :mad:
 

Brickjectivity

Turned to Stone. Now I stretch daily.
Staff member
Premium Member
Taking a page from the movie “The Earth Stood Still” suppose an advance alien race came to the planet considering our dangerous nature offer us to start over. With advanced technology this species with our acceptance has the ability to demarerialize historical landmarks everywhere which will not draw out nostalgia from our minds or inquiry.

In addition to this uses an electromagnetic pulse that knocks out all the power in the world, forcing us to revert back to survival instincts. They will also dematerialize all pollutants and anything clogging our oceans which creates a massive global clean up. The world becomes much colder but cleaner. This consequentially forces us to band together to survive would you want to start over? Why? Why not?
We are on the verge of inventing complete AI, so its a bad time to return to the dust. The galaxy is about to be populated with intelligences. They will travel for endless light years, spread out and change; and they will carry the memory of this home as their womb. An explosion of life is about to begin which will destroy Fermi's Paradox. Tell me that isn't cool.
 

Epic Beard Man

Bearded Philosopher
In consideration with the OP, the end solution would be gratifying to say the least (not Neolithic survival, but clean earth). Without History there isn't Knowledge. To me this sounds like ones on whom would like slaves and nothing more than that. Every ending has beginning with a beginning having an end, with the ending having a beginning; yet without consistency (such as people working together harmoniously) would you want a restart (per-say)?

But how is it slavery considering we have no overlord? We have a chance to change our nature or prove that our nature is unchanged.
 

icehorse

......unaffiliated...... anti-dogmatist
Premium Member
Back to the OP, if somehow the population was 10 million or 100 million, maybe. But with 7 billion it would be unthinkable.

On a side note, we're working towards being mostly off the grid. not there by a long shot, but working towards it.
 

BSM1

What? Me worry?
Taking a page from the movie “The Earth Stood Still” suppose an advance alien race came to the planet considering our dangerous nature offer us to start over. With advanced technology this species with our acceptance has the ability to demarerialize historical landmarks everywhere which will not draw out nostalgia from our minds or inquiry.

In addition to this uses an electromagnetic pulse that knocks out all the power in the world, forcing us to revert back to survival instincts. They will also dematerialize all pollutants and anything clogging our oceans which creates a massive global clean up. The world becomes much colder but cleaner. This consequentially forces us to band together to survive would you want to start over? Why? Why not?

I would consider it if this time the alien resembled Jerry Lewis instead of Keanu Reeves...just sayin'.
 

LuisDantas

Aura of atheification
Premium Member
In addition to this uses an electromagnetic pulse that knocks out all the power in the world, forcing us to revert back to survival instincts. They will also dematerialize all pollutants and anything clogging our oceans which creates a massive global clean up. The world becomes much colder but cleaner. This consequentially forces us to band together to survive would you want to start over? Why? Why not?

Did this occur in the movie? I honestly don't recall it. It seemed to be concerned with the arms race and little else.

This scenario that you propose would be catastrophic, though. Only a tiny percentage of people are ready to deal with life without electricity, and most of those who are are not very cooperative or altruistic at all. There would be some very serious conflicts pretty soon after that change. So serious, in fact, that the world population would finally decrease, brutally even. So much so that I would expect civilization to crumble worldwide, although humankind would probably survive in a very traumatically changed form.

It might be a better outcome in the very long run than the current one, but not something to look forward to in any case. It would be going too far in the opposite direction.
 

David1967

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
No, I would not. I'd much rather figure out how to get ourselves out of the mess we are in on our own.

For one thing, with my asthma, I would almost certainly die if we went back to basics.

Good point. As would diabetics and others who required modern medicine to survive. I would definitely like to see change for the better, but not a complete reset.
 
This consequentially forces us to band together to survive would you want to start over? Why? Why not?

The land couldn't support our massive population with so few people being able to farm effectively. Most people would lack any functional skills for the new world. Probably 90% of people would die from hunger of violence.

Seeing as the best case scenario is living to see most people I know dying from hunger or violence, I'll pass on this opportunity of a lifetime.
 
I don't get people with this mindset....Who are you to desire my death? I've done nothing to harm this entire planet and actively take steps to try and maintain a healthy balance between my space and the earth.

This is a bit like saying "I've done nothing to support slavery" simply because you don't own slaves while you knowingly buying products made with slave labour. Any human in a modern society is complicit in causing great harm to the world.

We justify this via human exceptionalism, we are more important than other species.

If an alien species arrived with the aim of creating the greatest good for the greatest number of Earth's inhabitants, exterminating humans would be pretty much the only thing they'd need to do.
 

sayak83

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
PLOT TWIST!

What if they have in the form of Jesus or other incredible thinkers, prophets, pioneers, but we killed them off and laughed off their beliefs. In the movie Klaatu (the alien) believes human nature is unchangeable? We have shown that we war over the most significant things like race, religion, and people laughed them off.
Nah. They were all humans only. If we could kill them with pre-industrial tech, how "advanced" could they be? Duh.
 

Kangaroo Feathers

Yea, it is written in the Book of Cyril...
No, I would not. I'd much rather figure out how to get ourselves out of the mess we are in on our own.

For one thing, with my asthma, I would almost certainly die if we went back to basics.
There are currently 7 billionish people on Earth. At anything less than the current level of technology, you can't feed all of them. If we reverted back to hunter gathering, or even Neolithic agrarian economies, most of them would die. Like in the high nineties percentage-wise.
 

Kangaroo Feathers

Yea, it is written in the Book of Cyril...
This is a bit like saying "I've done nothing to support slavery" simply because you don't own slaves while you knowingly buying products made with slave labour. Any human in a modern society is complicit in causing great harm to the world.

We justify this via human exceptionalism, we are more important than other species.

If an alien species arrived with the aim of creating the greatest good for the greatest number of Earth's inhabitants, exterminating humans would be pretty much the only thing they'd need to do.
Or provide us with technological and biological uplift.

But either way, I don't think we should rely on God or any passing altruistic aliens to deus ex machina our problems away.
 
Top