Forrest Gumpp,
before you tear me to bits, on a re-read I've just noted your "dalek-tical materialism". Oh dear, I am a silly sausage sometimes.
I beg your indulgence..

Squeers says:

"... you surprise me Forrest.
Or have I misunderstood?"

Misread, perhaps, Squeers. What I spelled was 'dalektical'. Surely you are familiar with daleks, from the days of 'Doctor Who', the Time Lord of the Tardis, that famed BBC SF series from the Sixties? Now if I remember correctly, daleks, if ever once they got you in their sights, were the extreme 'dematerializers' of their time. Acting in concert in a pack, it was almost as if they, too, were parts of a 'super organism' possessed of its famous one-word (oft repeated) vocabulary 'exterminate!': they encouraged one another materially. And yes, I'll admit to 'materialism' in that context being an inverted pun, an 'und' if you are well teutored in the genre of such humour.

I'm not trying to be Bolshie, Squeers. (And I'm a tad disappointed that nobody has picked up on the conflation of the Borg of 'Star Trek: Next Generation' with the 'Doctor Who' series, but I guess that's life on OLO for a contralabelist like myself. I'll assimilate it somehow.)

It was, after all, a Saturday. I was having a sabbatical. Banjo, a long time OLO user, generally quotes accurately, and his quote of Flannery was analogous to a description of a head in a rugby scrum, just too good to ignore. So I kicked it. It was fun. I had been bored. AGW is boring. Nobody was posting on the articles or topics I wanted them to. Wasn't that mean of them?

Apropos Banjo and his quoting of Flannery, I can't believe Bugsy's swipe at Banjo suggesting he did not watch the video. Of course Banjo must have watched the video! Where else on that page could he have got his quote? And just to put the matter properly to rest, the headline on the linked page says 'Comment is Free'; accordingly, I have been free with my comments.

Like 'FredinSpain' in the Comment comments says:

"Anybody can spout the crap in the article, it
takes an Australian to really make a good job of it."

"I can't believe Bugsy's swipe at Banjo suggesting he did not watch the video. Of course Banjo must have watched the video! Where else on that page could he have got his quote?" -Forrest

Really Forrest? I would have thought it would be obvious! Selective , out of context quotes that just happen to exactly match selective, out of context quotes from both Andrew Bolts blog, http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/flannery_flips

and Tim Blair's blog at the Daily Telegraph:
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/the_great_day_has_come

Coincidence? Perhaps. But I think unlikely.

Of course, Flannery is talking about an emergent property of human society that is starting to take shape, in that we are starting to become specialist in our division of labour and highly interdependent on each other for our own survival. We are no longer merely a 'herd', but we are also not, nor will ever be a collectivist centrally controlled 'hive mind' populated by drones that conservatives immediately like to envision such ideas.

This idea is not political, it's just an observation that we are starting the formation of a global society and has been enabled by telecommunications and 'globalisation'. Yes, Flannery is optimistic that we will come together to solve many our collective problems that affect our ability to survive, but for some reason many conservatives don't like that idea. I guess most of them don't think we have problems in the first place.

Bugsy,
if Flannery had an ounce of credibility he'd be denouncing the engine of globalisation, which has little to do with telecommunications and everything to do with the movement of capital. I notice Flannery invokes James Lovelock's concept of Gaia, yet he doesn't acknowledge or contradict Lovelock's famous pessimism. Moreover the very notion that we are somehow cooperating in an international sense is twaddle. The division of labour stuff too is garbage; we have a strict division as always between elites and working classes, it's just that working classes now increasingly wear white collars. Blue and white collar workers just have high-sounding job descriptions now, and a condescending career path mapped out for them. To imagine modern western society, in its current form, is or ever will be working in concert is fantasy. However, if you care to tackle the question, may I ask, to what end?
The reality is that modern western societies are profoundly alienated within and downright dysfunctional. We have not formed a super-organism--the man's on recreational drugs, as opposed to anti-depressants like the rest of us--what we have is a series of malignant tumours metastasising from west to east.

I would love to know what our "shared beliefs" are going to be!

Flannery has not only fallen from his tree, he landed on his head!

Blokes can fall off trees, but there is no bloke there!
Tim Flannery, if indeed he ever lived, is now dead. It is the voice of the dead which you hear. Yes, his lips move, his face change expressions, his words are consistent, scientific and reflect logical ideas, but there is no one behind that face, only a mechanism is left, no conscious being who is aware of who he is. This is the dead face of materialism.

Yes, evolution works as described, but evolution is unconscious, it is dead.
Why should we who are alive and conscious be serving evolution? Why should we serve a dead mechanism? What reason have we to be helping a dead force to fulfill its programming?

Beliefs, whether private or shared, are no substitute for life, nor is intelligence. Computers can also have ideas, and one day they may even have more complex ideas than we are capable of and perhaps even be more intelligent than any of us, yet it does not give them one ounce of awareness.

So what if Gaia evolves? So what if even whole galaxies take shape? these are inanimate objects, and so also is human society. It makes no sense to sacrifice one's life, or any part thereof, in the worship of such dead idols.

Matter is but a tool, society is but a tool, even our own body is but a tool, but a vehicle. All these will perish sooner or later, so any desire to prolong their existence or enhance their functionality is plainly insane and the idea of "progress" plainly stupid. The idea that life on earth will continue and further develop a bit longer is not optimistic, and the idea that it will not is not pessimistic.

There is no future, nor should there be any, there is simply nothing to miss, there is only now and no shortage thereof. All that is left is to rejoice while we breath and thank God for this opportunity.

I stand corrected.

It's obviously not just conservatives.