[tw]

Originally Posted by Catwoman

I understand your point. I still can't see we why we can't have real wood fires in place of thermostats, though. It's like choosing the best method of battery farming: this is the most efficient way, but it is still battery farming. But I'm never going to convince people to lose their convenience products, so I suppose the economical competition is a good thing in the 'real world'.

Most everyone in the world does little to nothing to advance mankind. Most of us are simply part of a large support structure. We maintain the status quo. From this large mass of people and products come, every now and then, someone who actually advances mankind. Unfortunately, that is what innovation takes to make. We cannot know, for example, that a silly attempt to play chess would result in software structures that underpin the entire computer industry and the internet. And yet so many advances result from absurd and time wasting things such as games.

One problem with America in the depression was that so many were not out there doing convenience products. As a result, so little new was also being developed. IOW we can never know what or where the great next breakthrough will come from. And so we all do our jobs every day just maintaining the status quo. From this comes the rare, new or innovative idea.

Open heath fireplaces were good when wood was so plentiful, when there was so much clean air to dirty, and when your neighbor was miles away, and when your front yard was full of trees. The Ben Franklin pot belly stove was a classic example of major innovation. Try heating with wood sometime. Appreciate how much more efficient, cleaner, and more convenient the Ben Franklin stove is. It was a classic example of innovation. How long did everyone use open hearths until one man finally discovered something so simple? Welcome to how innovation happens. Painfully slow.

Now to muddy the waters. Rape and infidelity are such destructive events. And yet genetic research has demonstrated how rape and infidelity were also so helpful and necessary in the advancement of mankind; the 'mixing of the gene pool'. Why is one event so destructive from one perspective become so productive from another perspective? Please don't get hung up with the emotional baggage associate with 'immoral' sex. Deal with the overall concept.

The point is that innovation is so difficult to obtain. We put thousands to work if only to get one person who advances mankind. We tell others how they are doing so good. But really, it is a rare person who advances mankind. And then we must add perspective to the analysis. Not only is innovation so difficult to see under your nose, but, many things necessary to advance mankind's future may actually appear to be so destructive in the short term.

Why would anybody want to be a soldier? It depends on top management whether you are really working for the common good. After all, did the so called good nation do any good why bombing Vietnam back into the stone age?

A soldier typically is doing nothing to advance mankind. Often he is just maintaining the status quo. One need only see the movie Band of Brothers to appreciate so much pain and sweat to but protect the status quo. How could you tell them they did not advance mankind? But then we need most people to only maintain the status quo so that the rare advancement can come from the so very few. We have no other proven way to advance mankind. Most people do nothing but daily maintain the status quo.