plenty of positives

Submitted by Mohammed Waza Khiddif Id'ullah (Australia), Aug 30, 2015 at 03:56

"We're starting to diverge on all sorts of matters."

Differences of opinion are allowed - in fact even encouraged. It gives us the chance to realise we may not be 100% right.

"..So much for the Islamies. As I said, they're just pests. Except for the fact that they will attack Israel, I would not be much concerned about them. .."

Whether they are 'just pests' depends how far away they are from where you live.

"......, was the fact that what we now consider "normal" searching, looking things up using keywords, won't even exist in a few years: Instead of our having to search for things we want to know, the Internet engines will already know what we're thinking and what we want, and they will simply offer us a selection to choose from."

That's hyperbole. A computer cannot possibly 'know' what you're thinking - besides - it has no brain/machine interface. And a search engine is even ore crippled. How can a search engine possibly know the very next question I will ask it? Observe your own interaction with google - you don't have any idea what your next question will be - or what will trigger it. It could be 'number of juvenile white rhinoceros in US zoos' - or 'formula for radius of circle inscrbed in equilateral triangle'.

".."the beast" (One World Govt., controlled by some rich Americans) and the "false prophet" (control technology), just as described in the book of Revelation, "

I can see how you think that - but we are creating the future each day. It hasn't 'happened' yet - it is a product of what we do collectively each moment. By already deciding how the future 'is', in a sense you're creating that future - will you be disappointed if it does not happen the way you think it might?

".. These things are coming to be, because people WANT THEM, because they make life comfortable and easy to those fortunate enough to still be in the Middle Class; "

Access to technology is available to all classes in the West at least - and China and Russia make a fair fist of emulating us these days. There's nothing wrong with using technology to help one's experience of life. Would you rather pound a rock with a sledgehammer - or jackhammer? Use a candle or Led light?

"Children will betray parents and wives will betray husbands in those days, and, "

We live in a time where people's internal states become more and more exposed showing their strengths and their weaknesses. People with next to no stability need less and less of a trigger to tip them over the edge, creating repercussions that harm other people. Another great example this week from the US - from the black gay guy who killed those news reporters - and wanted to leave the world Everyone gets wounded - and tend to shut down. We begin to accept poor behaviour as being somehow 'normal'. This is a vicious spiral and the situation worsens and gets crazier. I guess it's always been this way - behaviours must have slowly gone down hill in Rome. And certainly peoples' expectations of the world they lived in were very different in 1937 than they were in 1941.

So we shouldn't be shocked. You have to look at the positives - we actually do live in an amazing era . A man over 40 was an old man in Rome. I've never had to go to a war - have you? I've never had to make the decision to kill an enemy or not. I've never really starved, though have felt hunger. There's no way I can catch bubonic plague - or TB (unless I go to PNG maybe.) I can communicate with someone 20,000 kms away as easily as I do with someone next door. I can learn about any subject to virtually any depth - nothing is out of bounds

Betrayal? 'He who expects nothing shall not be disappointed'.

"as Jesus said, "the love of many will grow cold"

This brings us to the question - if anyone ever has succesfully predicted the future - then the future must have already happened. If it has already happened - how much of a part does personal responsibility and volition play? No matter how much or how little you do - the outcome is fixed.

A real puzzle isn't it?

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