David, I was perhaps unclear. Religions exist as part of the culture and culture emerges from our eusociality and helps to form a sense of cohesion within a disparate group.

The actual form of the religion or the details of the belief structure are obviously very varied, but the social role is the same and to the extent that I am interested in finding a general model of social interactions they are largely interchangeable.

Is that clearer?

I'm sure I'll learn a great deal David. I wouldn't be doing it otherwise. I'm not feeling sufficiently humble to deny that I also think I have something to contribute. Time will tell.

Lexi, I suspect that we can tell exactly what form our society will take and it will look a lot like this one, with detail vaiations, like a new model of Mercedes compared to the one from 5 years ago.

The devil is in the detail, of course.

I reckon China may be well ahead of the West in its understanding of social interactions and they control information to reduce the degrees of freedom each individual has to create deterministic non-linearity in the stochastics.

They seem to have a pretty good handle on it, by all accounts, although I'd personally not be happy with a model that required such a minimal set of variables.

I musty see what psycho-sociological dynamics stuff is coming out of China. Thanks for jogging my elbow.

David, I missed your last post because I was composing my own, but I think you're quite right.

It would be nice to be able to integrate some of that social understanding into a more complex model with more variables and a larger set of societal structures.

I'll bet they've already done it.

Dear Antiseptic,

Wow!

Who'd have thought that you were this intelligent,
awesome man. Sorry, I don't mean to offend,
but from the Anti who used to be - you've evolved
into something - Wow!

I'm impressed.
Please keep it up.

Same Anti, Lexi, different time.I do appreciate your compliment and I take no offence at all. It's a fair observation.

The last 14 years have been the most stressful of my life, both financially and emotionally and I have had to devote myself to dealing with those problems, as well as trying to make sense of why it all happened.

I had a very low reserve of tolerance for the sort of silly rubbish that was so often the response whenever I tried to have a serious discussion, so I set out to drive them off. It wasn't pretty, but it worked and it gave me a distraction. I did a lot of self-medicating with beer and pot. I became a rather nasty person online, really. Poor GrahamY copped it flush on the chin a couple of times.

In 2010 I finally fought the CSA back into its hole and I no longer have to concern myself with them. In November 2011 I closed my business after over 7 years, pretty much burnt out and busted and I got a job driving a crane truck.

After 2 years I'm finally starting to get back into my groove. Unfortunately, nobody who has met me in the last 13 years would know what a shadow I was, but that was all then, this is now. I'm back to well less than a carton of beer a week and I haven't had a pipe for a month. It's amazing how much they suppress. They served their purpose though. I'm very grateful that they don't seem to have done any permanent damage - to my brain anyway. I've got to try to drop about 15kg, which as I'll be riding my pushbike to uni, should be easy.

It's also great to see a group of people on here who can actually think and discuss. It stimulates my own thinking no end, for which I'm very grateful.

Dear Antiseptic,

We can never know what demons people are faced
with in life. The fact remains you've come
through it. Hopefully stronger. And the Anti we see now is
quite amazing. It's we who should be thanking
you. You've lifted the bar on this forum with
what you've brought to it and I for one am grateful
to you for that. I look forward to many, many discussions
with you, and learning from you. You've got so much
to offer. And it will be even more interesting once your
studies resume. There'll be no stopping you. I just trust
that I'll be able to keep up. ;-)

Take care.
All The Best.

With all due respect it is my opinion that you are all falling for complex scenario solution. I would like to present a simple theory and I would like you to pull it to pieces.

You would have to agree that hunter gatherer society survive on what they hunt and gather. They also would be required to build shelter and make clothing. There would be a degree of cooperation, sharing and caring because without this there would be no point in having a society. The individuals that hunted and gathered would get the pick of the produce as they were to ones that produced it. The balanced would be shared as it would not be in the interest of the society to lose a member. When times are tough a greater effort would have to be made to survive and the whole society would be affected.

In our modern global society what is produced is represented by money and has the effect of removing the limitations of only producing what you need. The positive aspect of money is that it enables individuals to specialise in non-productive activities that benefit society such as education, medicine, science as well as many other positive activities. Unlike hunter gatherer society money also enables individuals accrue a disproportionate share. Money has created an incentive to produce more than we need the ability to rage war, the rich, the poor all of which are undesirable. It is the cause of capitalism, communism, fascism, slavery, class, debt and so much more.

The solution (very condensed version) – Personal income per annum (from all sources including fringe benefits) should be limited to a range from not only a minimum, but also to maximum linked to sustainable production. Income goes up goes up and down with productivity. We share the pain and the wealth.

Assuming such a (when pigs fly) solution was put in place, I would like anybody to point out the negative effect on global society if such a limitation was introduced