Quote Originally Posted by Kozzle View Post
Paradigm shifts do happen, albeit rarely, but they do happen under certain conditions. If they didn't happen the world would still be completely ran by the religious institutions because everyone would believe that this is the highest power. I don't expect any real sacrifices on anyone's part (except maybe to drop one's beliefs in a completely monetary-based system). There are ways to have a healthy medium except we haven't found those mediums. At the rate we are going do you think we can sustain our current system? It's only a matter of time before pollution is too great to face or that we run out of certain natural resources or what have you. It's not the system per se that is flawed, the problems we face are but symptoms of the cause: the consumer mindset that we are endowed with.

How can anyone expect ethical changes when it costs money to be ethical? The vast majority of the population is stuck in a financial situation where they can't afford to be ethical without considerably lowering their standards of living while we have the fat cats at the top who don't give a damn about any of it. THIS is the part that bothers me. We have the technology and resources to provide a decent standard of living to practically everyone; but that can't happen with a system like this ran by humans (read the book i suggested; it isn't the system we live in that is fucking us over but rather our mindset towards these issues).

Solutions are possible, we just aren't exploring them because most of the people who have the resources to accomplish anything are only worried about 1 thing: profit.
I think the point is more along the lines that a paradigm shift of that magnitude (re-ordering an entire culture and way of living) could never happen overnight, short of catastrophe. Even in that case, it is still not affecting a full country of, say, 200 million people, but rather the survivors who now have to face an environment that is suddenly alien to them. Because they then have to readjust to a situation, they will likely make vast changes because their initial way of life is no longer viable.

So you can expound on theories that would, if put into practice, make some kind of utopian ideal, but words are words: cheap. The ideas contained within can be powerful, absolutely true, but unless they take hold in mankind, their entire effect is null and they may as well not even exist.

So, we make compromise changes to a system that doesn't work over a long period of time, baby steps changing the way people (who thrive on routine) live to one that is more beneficial in the long run. The only way these theories could have an application would be as a long-term, overarching goal, but that is impossible to pull off successfully over the course of our lives.