On the other hand, I also made a fatal mistake. I misunderstood the word “eugenics” for meaning “the science of population growth control”. As it turned out, definitions from Google among others pointed to the meaning “a movement during the early twentieth century aimed at maintaining genetically pure races; advocated the prohibition of interracial marriages as well as the sterilization of the mentally handicapped”. This sort of thing, I definitely can not tolerate and agree with. The Nazis did this I believe? I also know a scientist who experimented with this concept, and regretted in in his later years in life.

Anyway, had I found out the meaning of eugenics earlier, I wouldn’t have answered the way I did. Instead, I would say “Where in this summary did you find any sentence where I suggest to use eugenics?”. I believe all this summary advocated was limiting population growth through standard contraceptive practices and celibacy for those who are willing and able, to reach an optimum number of global population, not for an “optimum race with superior genes”. Not anywhere I indicated the usage of “selective breeding”, or “genetically improved babies”, or worse yeat “race cleansing”. I hope you would put enough care in rereading this summary to find this out.

And no, I don’t think “our Social System and all what it stands for as being the pinnacle of High evolution of Mankind: the Western Culture representing the highest of Human achievement?”. The summary I suggested to you of the work of Immanuel Wallerstein, among other works I summarized in this weblog, strongly suggests the other way around.

I am trying to be sincere, because from my experience in conversing with people having different opinion from myself is that, if I do it the other way around (pretentious and full of intrigue), the dialogue process became too resource consuming (in terms of time, thought and energy) and certainly unproductive, where usually, we end up dissenting each other and not learning from each other. What we need in the world is much more “open and sincere dialogue, with no hidden cards” (to use the words of the controversial leader of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez).

As with the CAPITALIZING thing, I don’t think you should take it that seriously :) Maybe it just happens that I go into dialogue forums where such things are considered SHOUTING. Thus, I do wish to meet you someday for a face-to-face dialogue. :)

I have read your website a little bit prior to answering your comments in the first place. That is precisely why I managed to answer in a sincere and civil way, because I can see that you are a person of good intention (oh, and I also noticed that you used one emoticon “;)” in your first post, which helps me to reach this conclusion).

I hope you do well with the revision of your book. By the way, is it also released digitally for free? (with Creative Commons licensing for example). (I don’t think I will have the financial resources in the near future to buy foreign books. They are just too expensive for researcher-on-a-tight-budget like me :P)

I am however still confounded by your word-choice in the following sentence:

She (mother earth) WILL tolerate ALL the Humans who are willing to live IN HARMONY WITH Her!… the rest WILL be eliminated! . . . .

I do not think mother Earth is “vicious” in that it will “intentionally eliminate” those that go against Her way. There’s a reason why they use the word “mother” earth, instead of “father” earth :) Don’t you agree?

One more thing, Wibowo, I LOVE your web-site and the thought provoking Issues you take up… some Info is outdated and a liiittle toooo Mainstream “knowledge” but still; most of it is really good! AND -once again- Thought provoking for many many people!…THAT alone is a great accomplishment by one person! I’m your Fan! : )

Thank you for the compliments. You are too generous :)

Though I probably understand why, hearing “mainstream knowledge”, however, lead me to be curious. From the perspective of people with your line of thinking, I wonder what sort of things in my weblog you considered as such. I’d appreciate it if you kindly point me out to some of them, as it would help me broaden my perspective. I am afterall, still a beginner.

Oh, and may I ask by the way, how did you find this summary in the first place? (and I need to know, how did you found out I had replied to your comments, was it RSS for the comments? was it my email? or is edublogs.org automatically sends email whenever new comments appear? . . . see how much of a beginner I am? :P)

Million thanks.

I do feel sincerity emanating from you, but as you come across to me is a little confused still.
Let me ask you; do you think of our Social System and all what it stands for as being the pinnacle of High evolution of Mankind: the Western Culture representing the highest of Human achievement?

Once I have that answer, we can continue to share, eh?
No, what you say about CAPITALIZING is the Mainstream IDEA of Literary working… and that is all passe` by now. People all over InterNet and in books (outside “The Box”) use CAPITOLS to EMPHASIZE , cause we can’t really gesticulate and no fascial expressions or tonalities in speaking can be used when writing…. : ) Hope it stops offending you…. If we were here face to face you would know exactly what I’m talking about, I swear! : )

Mother Earth will NOT tolerate us going on producing S— the way we do… be it under this -dreamed up/fabricated “Blessing” - or that!…. She WILL tolerate ALL the Humans who are willing to live IN HARMONY WITH Her!… the rest WILL be eliminated!…. Mother Earth is not the stone-dead Idiot the “Establishment” has tried to make us believe for these last 5-6000 years of their rule. (Their Game is over and their days are counted… the Question is; how many ignorant Innocents will they take down with them?….)
Suggestion: read my website, eh? : ) it will give you New Perspectives on Things. I promise!

And I should restate why I chose the title “Central Feature”. It is because I come to the conclusion that among other options (a new kind of technology or political economy), family planning via contraceptive method towards an optimum level of global population, is the easiest, least-resistance method available at our (immediate) disposal, and also simple to understand and do for every newly-wed couple, and soon to be marrying youngs on the planet.

I don’t think/believe for one second that “too many humans” is our first and immediate problem! . . . Not at all!

This must have came from the quotations I adapted from Dr. Albert Bartlett’s work in “Arithmetic, Population and Energy” at the beginning of this summary. It is of course OK to disagree, but I also hope that you spend time reading his excellent article to understand the reasons why he summed up our problem the way he did. (You can also watch or listen to his presentation here, and get the complete paper with figures here)

There’s plenty of SPACE on Planet Earth! . . . (how many people could easily and comfortably live a SUSTAINABLE life-style on Bush family’s 100.000 acre ranch in Argentina, for instance? -or on the queen of England’s PROPERTIES in the THOUSANDS of acres here in the US alone (do you think she comes here every so often and takes a stroll in Nature, so to speak? /. . . I doubt it! . . .

I agree with your proposition that a man should never own more than his share. Gandhi said “The earth provides enough for our need, but not for our greed”. I have only begun to explore the big “land question”, so I can not comment further on this matter but to point you to a collection of quotations I made in this site concerning the matter at “Some Thoughts on Land as a Commons”. (I do however wish to point you out to examples in nature when a species becomes too dominant and used too much space and resources that make the ecosystem unstable and leads to the reduction in biodiversity. This usually happens when an “alien species” with dominant traits from other region is introduced into that ecosystem. The biosphere I would argue have come to similar terms in that homo sapiens became too many, used up too much resources, destabilizes the biosphere, and reduces biodiversity, with similar analogy of us becoming “alien” to our native place, the Earth. We simply lost touch and intimacy with it.)

Our FIRST and FOREMOST PROBLEM is OVER PRODUCTION of ‘NEW Production’ of “Everything”.
Your own site talks about the necessity of RECYCLING, RE0USING etc! . . . Why is that -if not because we do NOT NEED -nor can we afford- producing more NEW “Stuff”.
What we need -hand in hand with this halting of almost ALL New Production- is a NEW SOCIAL SYSTEM, based on HIGHER LIFE- AWARENESS/consciousness ; a new (Co-) Creativity: to “re-invent the wheel,” to be improved to fit LIFE/Nature better and with MUCH LESS harm done to Earth -and all the rest living , breathing things here!

We can afford to produce “new stuff” if the principles and practices of our industrial product design adheres to the principles of “cradle to cradle” developed by William McDonough and Michael Braungart here (or more at William McDonough’s website). One of my favourite among the fundamental principles in their design methodology is how they begin their design cycle with the question “How do we love all the children, of all species, for all time?”.
As for “a new social system”, I would love to hear some of your findings as I am also at the beginning of my exploration in this area. My most recent interesting find on this field would be that of Immanuel Wallerstein’s work which I summed up in “Our Capitalist World-Economy is Crumbling, What’s Next and What to Do? - A World-Systems Analysis of Our Global Predicament.”

I find it curious that you guys who produce this site, carry on DOUBLE STANDARDS the way you do! GENUINE INTEGRITY is A GOOD THING! ; )

I do not profess to have found “the ultimate standard”, or “the ultimate solution”, neither have I profess to have “a genuine integrity”. As other mortal humans, I am full of mistakes and inconcistencies, thank you for pointing me out to another one of them. (By the way, it is not “guys” producing this site, but only me collecting excellent writings from the web and summarize them.)

EUGENICS has never solved anything . . . and to blme our current situation on “too many humans” is incredibly ignorant -and arrogant as well. . . . and only supports WARS & Other forms of RACIST GENOCIDES, which were practiced already 1000hyears ago with the SAME CLAIM:”TOO MANY HUMANS” ( around 200 million WORLD TOTAL AT THAT TIME! . . . ) the Agendas ,so to speak, which is to say: those people who have created this big stink to begin with! . . .

I have to disagree with you on this point. Eugenics solved many issues throughout the world. I do not understand how you associated the kind of voluntary proposal I made in this summary with “WARS” and “RACIST GENOCIDES”, maybe you need to read it again. The kind voluntary action proposed in this summary are voluntary birth control via contraceptive methods, small family (planning), and celibacy/abstention. They are proposed precisely to prevent the other kind of choices, the involuntary ones, in the form of “WARS”, “RACIST GENOCIDES”, “FAMINE”, etc.
I also know the real difference between having too many children and stopping at two. I have friends and neighbors of both kinds. The latter usually are the ones with a greater degree of well-being. And this is among the most real and practical beneficial effect that eugenics in the form of voluntary family planning via contraceptive methods that I know of firsthand.

Sooo, on what/whose side of the “Fence” = Life , are you???? . . .

I believe “a new social system” and “optimum population” is not an EITHER proposition which one must choose from, but an AND proposition which complements each other well, with the latter being the easier thing to do by every single person on the planet who will soon become a parent. We will ofcourse need to construct that other option of creating, in your words, “a new social system” which is “based on higher life-awareness/consciousness.” The Earth Charter would provide us with a good starting point in this endeavour.
Thus, I am ofcourse on the side of Life. I hope my answers would be enough to let you see this.
(oh yes, a friendly advice: in the written universe, using CAPITAL letters is almost synonimous with SHOUTING. It might be better to use bold or italics to show emphasis. In case that you haven’t figured out how to do tha, in the commenting space of the blogosphere, you would write <code><strong>bold</strong></code> or <code><em>italics</em></code>)

There’s plenty of SPACE on Planet Earth!… (how many people could easily and comfortably live a SUSTAINABLE life-style on Bush family’s 100.000 acre ranch in Argentina, for instance? -or on the queen of England’s PROPERTIES in the THOUSANDS of acres here in the US alone (do you think she comes here every so often and takes a stroll in Nature, so to speak?…. I doubt it!….

Our FIRST and FOREMOST PROBLEM is OVER PRODUCTION of ‘NEW Production’ of “Everything”.

Your own site talks about the necessity of RECYCLING, RE0USING etc!… Why is that -if not because we do NOT NEED -nor can we afford- producing more NEW “Stuff”.

What we need -hand in hand with this halting of almost ALL New Production- is a NEW SOCIAL SYSTEM, based on HIGHER LIFE- AWARENESS/consciousness ; a new (Co-) Creativity: to “re-invent the wheel,” to be improved to fit LIFE/Nature better and with MUCH LESS harm done to Earth -and all the rest living , breathing things here!

I find it curious that you guys who produce this site, carry on DOUBLE STANDARDS the way you do! GENUINE INTEGRITY is A GOOD THING! ; )
EUGENICS has never solved anything… and to blme our current situation on “too many humans” is incredibly ignorant -and arrogant as well. …and only supports WARS & Other forms of RACIST GENOCIDES, which were practiced already 1000hyears ago with the SAME CLAIM:”TOO MANY HUMANS” ( around 200 million WORLD TOTAL AT THAT TIME!… ) the Agendas ,so to speak, which is to say: those people who have created this big stink to begin with!…Sooo, on what/whose side of the “Fence” = Life , are you????…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUD0_FQfwB8