Pelican, I think that the illusion of great choice is just that. In reality most of us have little genuine choice in what we do because we are tied into obligations and commitments that override many of our possible responses.

I have little in the way of such commitments, other than to the welfare of my chidren, which is itself largely limited to financial aspects because my teen children prefer their mother's laissez faire attitude to my own approach which is somewhat more prescriptive and proscriptive. It's hard for a kid to understand that it's not in their interest to play computer games all day and not go to school if Mum is telling them it's fine. I don't have a mortgage, I don't owe any money I couldn't repay on the dole (or austudy, more relevantly), I don't have any contractual obligations that bind me.

As a result I can choose to leave work and take up full-time study largely on a whim, which most of those posting here would not. They could ditch the commitment (sell the house, etc), but few will.

However, my own lack of such ties also limits my options in other ways and imposes its own set of burdens. In either case, mine or theirs, our underlying motivations are pretty similar, but the behaviours that emerge because of interaction with social structures are very different.

It's a matter of being able to usefully characterise the drives and to arrive at an understanding of the factors that make people behave in one way rather than another. I give it 5 years for a crude set of models with poor resolution and no more than 15 for a comprehensive set that is able to resolve down to groups of similar demographics, perhaps even to the individual scale.

It will all fall into place when the right variables are chosen to describe the states that define people's relative susceptibility to specific motivations, just as thermodynamics required the development of equations of state to make it a useful predictive tool.

It is rare these days to see a thread that is a discussion rather than a patriotic political or religious rant.

I don’t pretend to have the intellect or the knowledge to comment with any authority on many aspects of this discussion. I do agree with concept that we as a society tend to over analyse stuff. This is done I believe in some cases to the detriment of analysis itself.

I am of the view that we have the instincts of a hunter gatherer society without the restrictions of that society. Those restrictions put simply were if you did not hunt or gather you did not eat. If you did not produce clothing or shelter you were naked and exposed. With few exceptions it was classless and the whole society was exposed equally to circumstance. If things were good it was good for everyone and vice versa.

This simple society has over time evolved to the modern one we have today. Its financial system allows some to manipulate productivity (what was hunted and gathered) to serve their own ends without producing anything themselves. Machines have been invented that allow one individual to produce the volume of many, but we also have machines that allow an individual to wield vast power and destroy so much. We have hungry, homeless in a society of wealth and waste. I could go on, but I think you get my drift.

We have arrived at a point that analysis and mathematical models tells us that we are literally destroying the planet as we know it and if we continue the planet will survive but we as a species will not. In the name of holy dollar and growth we continue toward the abyss.

We no longer have natural individual restriction of our hunter gatherer ancestors. My theory is if we do not put some simple artificial global restriction on today’s human society that mimics that of our ancestors the abyss cannot be avoided.

For me the meaning of life is to find personal meaning and fulfilment in the things I do; and to make those in my life more at peace and comfortable wherever possible.

Hi Producer, don't you enjoy dodging all the axes being ground?

I thought your comments were interesting and I agree with you that we need to work on reducing population.

The problem is that a declining population is not something that our economic and cultural models are able to deal with very well, especially the consumerist model that drove the corporate support for feminism. In fact, that support was predicated on a projected decline in consumption as the baby-boomers reached middle age and a severe decline when they started to retire. Now we've mobilised the whole population into paid work or receipt of government handouts what do we do?

I'm afraid I have no answer to that question, because it will require smarter and better-informed minds than mine to come up with a completely new model that doesn't require the continual growth that laissez faire capitalism or even regulated capital demands.

It will be interesting to see what the human responses are as well, when there are houses standing empty and business is facing a future of steadily declining revenue. Another thing I'll have to have a good think about.

Sheesh, it's Saturday night, it should be against the law to make a man think when it's drinking time.

Dear Antiseptic,

Human behaviour is largely shaped by the group to
which people belong and by the social interaction
that takes place within those groups. We are who we are
and we
behave the way we do because we happen to live in
particular societies at particular points
in space and time. If we had been born a Chinese
peasant, or an African pygmy, or an ancient Greek,
or a feudal aristocrat, our personality, our
options in life, and our social experience would be
utterly different. We tend to take our social world
for granted in many ways, accepting our society
and its customs often as unquestioningly as we do the
physical world that surrounds us.

It's very rare to see our society not as something to
be taken for granted as "natural" but as a temporary
social product, created by human beings and therefore
capable of being changed by them as well.

We usually see the world through our limited experience
in a small orbit of family, relatives, friends, and fellow
workers. This viewpoint places blinkers on our views of
the wider society. But it does more than that. It also
narrows our views of our own personal worlds, for they
are shaped by broader social forces than can easily pass
unrecognised.

If we could escape from this cramped personal vision -
to stand apart mentally from our own place in society
and see with clarity the link between private and
social events then perhaps we would be able to trace
the intricate connection between the patterns and events
of our own lives and the patterns and events of our
society. Study and education is the key that
would open up our eyes.

But enough said. This is all too difficult.
I'll now go and have that glass of Red.

Cheers Anti, and I really admire your going back to uni.

Antiseptic & Lexi I have often thought that perhaps looking for a complex solution to a complex question is not the way to go. We are a diverse species with back grounds, abilities, wants and needs that would have to be addressed by any solution. Bring in location, climate, politics and religion and not to forget self-interest and greed perhaps there is no answer?

A hunter gatherer society would not spend any more time hunting and gathering than what was required to survive, what would be the point. Sometime would have to be spent on clothing and shelter, but once those needs were met an individual would have been free to pursue more pleasurable activities. For the exercise I have left out plundering the neighbours and destructive pagan and religious rituals.

The question I believe we should be asking is how do we as a global society restrict the modern day equivalent of hunter gathering (Production) to what we need rather than what we want?