Boom and Bust

[savvypaul]

Ok. Some to discuss. I don't know the answers...did Germany need to be taken near to the point of complete destruction by Hitler in order to become one of the worlds best performing economies in the 7 decades? Did Britain need to lose 450,000 lives at the same time to see the creation of the NHS?

Do these things need to happen...therefore they are for the long term good?

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Very good questions. Try and look at it as an Alien watching us.

It is natural for us to focus on the individual as we are all individuals, but nature is only interested in life in general, each of us (and each species) are just experiments, that is the downside of our genetics that created the potential for Cancer.

[savvypaul]

Oh, for sure. I think that the nature of collective greed (or collective imperative, perhaps) is a good deal more significant.

[savvypaul]

And a more contemporary one...how will the greed of Trump (and therefore the US) one day be turned into progress? What form will it take?

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

The Dinosaur died out creating space for mammals to develop, creating us. If we die out we create space for something else, nature is not bothered. A million years is a blink of the eye.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

And a more contemporary one...how will the greed of Trump (and therefore the US) one day be turned into progress? What form will it take?

Who knows, time will tell, it could be something it could be nothing, it just is what it is.

[Alfi]

Fascinating thread Doc.

I have a notion (probably mistaken) that some higher "power" took the dinosaurs out to create an opening/opportunity for our evolution?

How could such a cataclysmic event not destroy small mammals and crocodile reptiles? However, I'm far from clever enough to debate this possibility. Was it perhaps that small mammals regenerate faster due to their high metabolic rates which allowed them to survive? But what did they eat?

Think I've just become interested in the Tao philosophy too, I shall have to do some more research into it.

Alfi.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Think I've just become interested in the Tao philosophy too, I shall have to do some more research into it.

Alfi.

Have you got a spare lifetime

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Fascinating thread Doc.

I have a notion (probably mistaken) that some higher "power" took the dinosaurs out to create an opening/opportunity for our evolution?

How could such a cataclysmic event not destroy small mammals and crocodile reptiles? However, I'm far from clever enough to debate this possibility. Was it perhaps that small mammals regenerate faster due to their high metabolic rates which allowed them to survive? But what did they eat?

Alfi.

There is much online about it, just read. A God concept is just to give us an easy way out and stop us exploring and learning. Basically it is a volatile changing universe - things like that happen!

There are more 20km wide lumps of rock whizzing around, and in the next umpteen millions of years at least one will have our name on it.

[Lurcher300b]

How could such a cataclysmic event not destroy small mammals and crocodile reptiles?

if you want a striking example of how the small can affect the large look at the Carboniferous period. During that era, there were huge insects (1M long scorpions for example). They could exist because of the higher than now oxygen levels. The evolution of a bacteria that could decompose dead plants caused the oxygen levels to fall (and the end of coal forming deposits as the plants rotted) and made the maximum size a insect could become the same as it is now. It also provided the pressure to evolve more efficient oxygen capture systems in animals that lead to lungs and us.