If there were no borders anywhere

[Bubu]

Posted by ulli (here)

As I have mentioned borders should exist but to a certain point as not to infringe on personal privacy. But borders to prevent people from using unuse natural resources should be dissolve. Of course almost all of us here want this world to be shared by all people. That would be difficult of course. But think about it, If we are doing something wrong shall we continue to do it just because we dont want more temporary chaos. I guess If I have a house that is chaotic and I decided to fix it I have to move every appliance and furniture to fix it ( make it more chaotic temporarily). Not fixing anything because its going to be temporarily chaotic is a cowardice act for me. This is the problem that hounds us ; we are afraid to confront the problem.

Here is a recent example about sharing resources.
A few years ago the people of Costa Rica demonstrated in the streets because a Canadian company wanted to extract gold from a rainforest region, and got the green light from Costa Rica’s then president Dr. Oscar Arias.

This caused a massive upheaval, and the people won, but the Canadian Company took them to court for breach of contract, and the court decided to impose a three billion dollar fine on the Costa Rican government.
Im curious now what happened to the rest of the case.
Anyway, my point is this, you seem to want to do away with national identities, and all the traditions that go with that.
How will that ever work, especially in third world countries? There are tribes in our forests here, all with their own language, customs and costumes. And they dont want to lose those territories, especially to massive mines, that feel they have the right on behalf of the needs of the peoples of the world to extract those resources.
Also ask the people in China why on earth they are so desperate to get a hold of ivory, never mind how many African elephants are killed in the process.

I'm for giving equal right to all people to all natural resources I have mentioned that a number of times. I dont know how will that affect national identity or where you get the notion that I am for dissolving national identity. One more thing I have mentioned time and again that it should not infringe on anyone's property or privacy. That means also that we can leave the tribes property and privacy for themselves. What I am saying again Is for people to be able to use unused natural resources. Surely we can do that. It just needs some agreement. That agreement comes naturally to us, by instinct or common sense. That is why they are doing all they can to prevent us from accessing our natural selves by giving us all the nuisance; electronics, fear and the likes

[ulli]

Posted by Bubu (here)

Posted by ulli (here)

As I have mentioned borders should exist but to a certain point as not to infringe on personal privacy. But borders to prevent people from using unuse natural resources should be dissolve. Of course almost all of us here want this world to be shared by all people. That would be difficult of course. But think about it, If we are doing something wrong shall we continue to do it just because we dont want more temporary chaos. I guess If I have a house that is chaotic and I decided to fix it I have to move every appliance and furniture to fix it ( make it more chaotic temporarily). Not fixing anything because its going to be temporarily chaotic is a cowardice act for me. This is the problem that hounds us ; we are afraid to confront the problem.

Here is a recent example about sharing resources.
A few years ago the people of Costa Rica demonstrated in the streets because a Canadian company wanted to extract gold from a rainforest region, and got the green light from Costa Rica’s then president Dr. Oscar Arias.

This caused a massive upheaval, and the people won, but the Canadian Company took them to court for breach of contract, and the court decided to impose a three billion dollar fine on the Costa Rican government.
Im curious now what happened to the rest of the case.
Anyway, my point is this, you seem to want to do away with national identities, and all the traditions that go with that.
How will that ever work, especially in third world countries? There are tribes in our forests here, all with their own language, customs and costumes. And they dont want to lose those territories, especially to massive mines, that feel they have the right on behalf of the needs of the peoples of the world to extract those resources.
Also ask the people in China why on earth they are so desperate to get a hold of ivory, never mind how many African elephants are killed in the process.

I'm for giving equal right to all people to all natural resources I have mentioned that a number of times. I dont know how will that affect national identity or where you get the notion that I am for dissolving national identity.

The only way that could ever work is if a global government extracts and distributes equally those resources to the rest of the world.
Knowing how hard it is for parents to treat all their children with absolute equal fairness I wonder how much harder it would be for the governing bodies of the world to do the same.

[Bubu]

that"s your opinion, My opinion is that it can only work if mankind finally come to term with itself. When the big majority of us finally realize that on the bigger picture we are one.

[ulli]

I dont want to sound like I’m arguing, but still would like you to realize that while yes, I agree with you that we are all one, we are ALSO all separate and unique.
It is the hardest thing to reconcile, I know, but the best analogy I can come up with is that of the tree and its many leaves.

No two leaves get the same amount of rain or sunshine, nor do that fall at exactly the same moment. We are all one tree, but each of us is a seperate leaf.

Posted by Bubu (here)
that"s your opinion, My opinion is that it can only work if mankind finally come to term with itself. When the big majority of us finally realize that on the bigger picture we are one.

[thepainterdoug]

ULLI said " Knowing how hard it is for parents to treat all their children with absolute equal fairness I wonder how much harder it would be for the governing bodies of the world to do the same."

Ulli you think like me. as above so is below. the large to the small. i think parent children analogies to world issues all the time. for example, in classified docs and such. oh how we all want to know. but they perhaps know why everyone shouldn't.

not in all cases of course,

[AriG]

Ulli and Doug,

We are not children nor have we ever surrendered our free will to the nanny state. Old paradigms are wearing out. Each individual must take responsibility for themselvesof and not look above for guidance. We don’t require babysitting or the withholding of information to secure our future. The only thing government does is create fear and divide people. If given the opportunity, mankind could work this out without “parental” oversight.

[ulli]

Posted by thepainterdoug (here)
ULLI said " Knowing how hard it is for parents to treat all their children with absolute equal fairness I wonder how much harder it would be for the governing bodies of the world to do the same."

Ulli you think like me. as above so is below. the large to the small. i think parent children analogies to world issues all the time. for example, in classified docs and such. oh how we all want to know. but they perhaps know why everyone shouldn't.

not in all cases of course,

Im glad you understood, Doug. Some things will just have to remain confidential, and negociating contracts on behalf of the populace by leaders they trust is the only way to go when it comes to managing territorial resources. Not everything can be solved via referendum. I’m very glad when I see people out there with masterful decision-making capabilities, especially as I’m getting older and my mind/ memory is not as sharp as it once was. The biggest step in my life was when I learnt to say “I don’t know”.

[AriG]

Ulli,

This is why we work together as a village. The more enigmatic should definitively look out for the care and interests of the aged and infirmed. That’s what we’re supposed to do. don’t need benign dictators to do that for us. And with today’s tech? EVERYTHING should be via referendum.

[ulli]

Posted by AriG (here)
Ulli,

This is why we work together as a village. The more enigmatic should definitively look out for the care and interests of the aged and infirmed. That’s what we’re supposed to do. don’t need benign dictators to do that for us. And with today’s tech? EVERYTHING should be via referendum.

Actually, I agree about not needing benign dictators to sort out problems of the weak, elderly, sick, etc. That is up to local communities. Although they often scream the loudest about a far away government not doing its job. But even with consulting about how to solve homelessness issues for instance someone has to first come up with an idea, and then present it in a clear manner, and then perhaps get everyone’s vote via poll on the Internet. Local people of the area will always have a better understanding of the problem than someone on the other side of the globe. Total consensus is the hardest thing to come by, Ive been in those discussions, and walked away disappointed at how many only open their mouths to contradict someone else. Maybe one day.

[Ernie Nemeth]

It's true, many only reply with contradiction. It seems we can't agree on anything. I keep thinking it must be because we are trying to solve problems at the wrong level. Like, I don't know, claiming we need more rainfall because the reservoir is almost dry, instead of coming up with resources to plug up all the leaks in the reservoir itself...

Like homelessness, or poverty in general. Smart and clever solutions can work at the local level, but to solve the problem of poverty requires addressing the underlying reasons for poverty, if there are any. Is it a systemic problem, education perhaps, or training, maybe access to small loans? I don't know.

I think the reason we cannot agree is because the solutions, and therefore the level of agreement, are deep beneath the problems we face today due to centuries of neglect. We cannot put our finger on the fundamental error, the intrinsic flaw, the mote of contention that resides just beyond our ability to comprehend or even imagine anymore. It flickers past in a remark here and there but its import is lost in the noise...

[AriG]

yes, gaining consensus amongst people is like herding cats, but that’s because there are so many other forces working against collaboration. Imagine what could be done if every individual were told that they no longer had to pay taxes to a state, but that 10% of their income had to be reinvested into their community of choice? Perhaps those with real financial resources might open a food bank or a shelter or housing for the elderly? Just one potential example. But I’ll suggest this - no one would choose to invest their 10% in war or nation building on behalf of wall streeet! They couldn’t - make their divestitures public- via searchable database to see where everything went. I could go on and on but I don’t want to monopolize this thread. A thread that IMO, has huge potential to be a real problem solving thread! A great thread!

[Bubu]

Posted by ulli (here)
I dont want to sound like I’m arguing, but still would like you to realize that while yes, I agree with you that we are all one, we are ALSO all separate and unique.
It is the hardest thing to reconcile, I know, but the best analogy I can come up with is that of the tree and its many leaves.

No two leaves get the same amount of rain or sunshine, nor do that fall at exactly the same moment. We are all one tree, but each of us is a seperate leaf.

Posted by Bubu (here)
that"s your opinion, My opinion is that it can only work if mankind finally come to term with itself. When the big majority of us finally realize that on the bigger picture we are one.

I agree with your analogy But I just don't see how this factors with my argument of giving equal rights. I guess the tree give equal rights to its leaves. And by the way plants share nutrients to each other. Humans hardly ever do that. we could be the plague on earth. If we can only be like plants. I guess plants dont try to control or enslave other plants. No specie on earth that I know do this. Only humans. Therefore we are the problem and the solution is within us.

[Bubu]

Posted by thepainterdoug (here)
ULLI said " Knowing how hard it is for parents to treat all their children with absolute equal fairness I wonder how much harder it would be for the governing bodies of the world to do the same."

Ulli you think like me. as above so is below. the large to the small. i think parent children analogies to world issues all the time. for example, in classified docs and such. oh how we all want to know. but they perhaps know why everyone shouldn't.

not in all cases of course,

This is because you are thinking that the solution lies on some governing bodies. I dont. I think the solution, as I've stated above, is in us. Who is governing us? our own kind. They comes from us. The government is what the people is. The solution as I have stated many times in many years. " be the change you wanted to see" If we want people to share then start sharing. We'll be an education by example. When people starts caring and sharing all bad governments disappear most problems will disappear. I'm not asking everyone to do the heavy lifting of furniture to fix the house. What I wanted is for people to put their efforts and hopes on the correct solution. And its definitely not in any of the governing bodies.

[Bubu]

Posted by Ernie Nemeth (here)
It's true, many only reply with contradiction. It seems we can't agree on anything. I keep thinking it must be because we are trying to solve problems at the wrong level. Like, I don't know, claiming we need more rainfall because the reservoir is almost dry, instead of coming up with resources to plug up all the leaks in the reservoir itself...

Like homelessness, or poverty in general. Smart and clever solutions can work at the local level, but to solve the problem of poverty requires addressing the underlying reasons for poverty, if there are any. Is it a systemic problem, education perhaps, or training, maybe access to small loans? I don't know.

I think the reason we cannot agree is because the solutions, and therefore the level of agreement, are deep beneath the problems we face today due to centuries of neglect. We cannot put our finger on the fundamental error, the intrinsic flaw, the mote of contention that resides just beyond our ability to comprehend or even imagine anymore. It flickers past in a remark here and there but its import is lost in the noise...

Ernie consider this. The flaw is with our nature our personality , habits or whatever you wanted to call. It happened because of the mind conditioning that we receive for centuries. apparently the controllers know this so as you can see the indoctrination is very much alive everywhere all the time. For them it has to continue if they want to control the masses. I know most people wont like this. Its just so simple or its just to hard to change ones habits.

[thepainterdoug]

well,

we have met the enemy, and he is us

[happyuk]

I think the idea of the itinerant outsider/outlaw is all very well in art and literature, but we simply cannot have convoys of non-tax-paying thieves and itinerant cowboys coming and literally s**ting in people's front gardens. It is what you might call a failure of government and the multi-cultural-ism industry to moderate, assimilate and integrate.

As someone with Irish ancestry, it gives me no pleasure to remark that my every encounter with an Irish tinker, tarmaccer, and lucky charm hustler has been uniformly unpleasant, uncivil, intimidatory and dishonest. This is not pre-judgement, or bigotry, but evidence of my own eyes. Dippy, crystal-gazing, new-age travelers are one thing. Hardcore diddycoy is something else altogether.

[Cara]

There is quite an interesting discussion of borders and boundaries and what they signify in the discipline of anthropology.

Arnold Van Gennep (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Arnold-van-Gennep) wrote a book “Les rites de passage” in 1909 in which he surveyed a wide range of rites and rituals of different cultures and societies. He developed some useful classification of ritual types and structures.

Here are the opening passages from the chapter on “The Territorial Passage” from this book.

Most interesting perhaps is to consider the significance of boundaries beyond economic and material realms and that usually there were defined and developed rites and rituals associated with crossing them.

Perhaps we have lost some of this understanding of borders but a kind of cultural memory remains? This might account for some of the depth of emotional response to the topic of borders.

Anyway, here are the passages:

Territorial passages can provide a framework for the discussion of rites of passage which follows. Except in the few countries where a passport is still in use, a person in these days may pass freely from one civilized region to another.* The frontier, an imaginary line connecting milestones or stakes, is visible - in an exaggerated fashion - only on maps. But not so long ago the passage from one country to another, from one province to another within each country, and, still earlier, even from one manorial domain to another was accompanied by various formalities.

These were largely political, legal, and economic, but some were of a magico-religious nature. For instance, Christians, Moslems, and Buddhists were forbidden to enter and stay in portions of the globe which did not adhere to their respective faiths.

It is this magico-religious aspect of crossing frontiers that interests us. To see it operating fully, we must seek out types of civilization in which the magico-religious
encompassed what today is within the secular domain.

The territory occupied by a semicivilized tribe is usually defined only by natural features, but its inhabitants and their neighbors know quite well within what territorial limits their rights and prerogatives extend. The natural boundary might be a sacred rock, tree, river, or lake which cannot be crossed or passed without the risk of supernatural sanctions.

Such natural boundaries are relatively rare, however. More often the boundary is marked by an object - a stake, portal, or upright rock (milestone or landmark) - whose installation at that particular spot has been accompanied by rites of consecration. Enforcement of the interdiction may be immediate, or it may be mediated by frontier divinities (such as Hermes, Priapus, or the deities represented on the Babylonian kudurru). When milestones or boundary signs (e.g., a plow, an animal hide cut in thongs, a ditch) are ceremonially placed by a defined group on a delimited piece of earth, the group takes possession of it in such a way that, a stranger who sets foot on it commits a sacrilege: analogous to a profane person's entrance into a sacred forrest or temple.

...

The prohibition against entering a given territory is therefore intrinsically magico-religious. It has been expressed with the help of milestones, walls, and statues in the classical world and through more simple means among the semi civilised. Naturally, these signs are not placed along the entire boundary line. Like our boundary posts, they are set only at points of passage, on paths and at crossroads.

A bundle of herbs, a piece of wood, or a stake adorned with a sheaf of straw may be placed in the middle of the path or across it.1 The erection of a portal,2 sometimes together with natural objects or crudely made statues3 is a more complicated means of indicating the boundary. ...

Today, in our part of the world, one country touches another; but the situation was quite different in the times when Christian lands comprised only a part of Europe. Each country was surounded by a strip of neutral ground which in practice was divided into sections or marches.

...

The same system of zones is to be found among the serni-civilised, although here boundaries are less precise because the claimed territories are few in number and sparsely settled. The neutral zones are ordinarily deserts, marshes, and most frequently virgin forests where everyone has full rights to travel and hunt. Because of the pivoting of sacredness, the territories on either side of the neutral zone are sacred in relation to whoever is in the zone, but the zone, in turn, is sacred for the inhabitants of the adjacent territories. Whoever passes from one to the other finds himself physically and magico-religiously in a special situation for a certain length of time: he wavers between two worlds. It is this situation which I have designated a transition, and one of the purposes of this book is to demonstrate that this symbolic and spatial area of transition may be found in more or less pronounccd form in all the ceremonies which accompany the passage from one social and magico-religious position to another.

From: The Rites of Passage, 1909. University of Chicago Press, 1960. pp 15-18

* It’s interesting to see that 110 years ago, when this book was written, passage between countries (in Europe?) seems to have occurred without the formalities of passports etc.

[onevoice]

Posted by Bubu (here)
I agree with your analogy But I just don't see how this factors with my argument of giving equal rights. I guess the tree give equal rights to its leaves. And by the way plants share nutrients to each other. Humans hardly ever do that. we could be the plague on earth. If we can only be like plants. I guess plants dont try to control or enslave other plants. No specie on earth that I know do this. Only humans. Therefore we are the problem and the solution is within us.

Bubu, I like your reference to the fact that trees do cooperate. We humans could learn a lot from the trees. Trees cooperate and older trees nurture younger trees by sending sugar and other nutrients to the trees that are not mature enough to reach enough sunlight to sustain themselves. Trees also form relationships and bonds. This article relates a story of an old beech that was cut down hundreds of years ago and other interesting things about trees.

I'm walking in the Eifel Mountains in western Germany, through cathedral-like groves of oak and beech, and there’s a strange unmoored feeling of entering a fairy tale. The trees have become vibrantly alive and charged with wonder. They’re communicating with one another, for starters. They’re involved in tremendous struggles and death-defying dramas. To reach enormousness, they depend on a complicated web of relationships, alliances and kinship networks.

Wise old mother trees feed their saplings with liquid sugar and warn the neighbors when danger approaches. Reckless youngsters take foolhardy risks with leaf-shedding, light-chasing and excessive drinking, and usually pay with their lives. Crown princes wait for the old monarchs to fall, so they can take their place in the full glory of sunlight. It’s all happening in the ultra-slow motion that is tree time, so that what we see is a freeze-frame of the action.

...

Once, he came across a gigantic beech stump in this forest, four or five feet across. The tree was felled 400 or 500 years ago, but scraping away the surface with his penknife, Wohlleben found something astonishing: the stump was still green with chlorophyll. There was only one explanation. The surrounding beeches were keeping it alive, by pumping sugar to it through the network. “When beeches do this, they remind me of elephants,” he says. “They are reluctant to abandon their dead, especially when it’s a big, old, revered matriarch.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...ees-180968084/

[Bubu]

Posted by thepainterdoug (here)
well,

we have met the enemy, and he is us

That's right Doug, we are our best friend as well as our worst enemy. It means we are responsible for ourselves individually and collectively.

[Ernie Nemeth]

Did you check out my link to World Peace?

This modern world is a ruse designed to steal the wealth produced by the masses and concentrate it in the hands of a very few. These few have never produced not the tiniest bit of wealth but spent much time scheming of ways to increase value and leverage that into true wealth via fractional reserve banking and fiat currency sleight-of-hand (not to mention controlling bottle-necks of all sorts like in shipping, information, resource mining, any commodity, and so much more that many books and days of U-tubes have been created to expose them all)

The level playing field is askew. Our coins roll into these scheming shysters' pockets while we have to trudge uphill just to pay the bills. We pay a premium for everything - and we made it all! Only those on the bottom to mid-level rungs produce wealth - the rest leverage their positions in the form of what's called value-added activities. Not that those are not valid pursuits in most cases, they are. What it isn't is wealth. Wealth is tangible goods and tangible services, things we can all recognize represent sweat equity. Value added tactics decrease the cost of things and greatly increases the profit margin. This is because the savings realized by leveraging the value of a product is not passed on to the consumer.

An entry level small car costs less than $1000 to produce, as an example. These tactics disproportionately increases the cost per item to the consumer . I have not even touched on the many outright fraudulent techniques foisted on the masses, the best and most costly being engineered obsolescence - the manufactured product designed to fail after a preset period of time! Our engineers are masters at that...

We pay so much for the goods we produce (that's, WE PRODUCE) that we have set up a small subset of our peers as little potentates.

Now on top of this sad and sorry state of affairs we wish to find solutions to manifest open borders, end poverty, and desecrate our hard won territories by flinging wide the doors? We are being robbed blind and until that is addressed there is no solution possible.