Solving the World's

Chatterbox: Down to Earth

Solving the World's

Solving the World's Problems

a thread for talking about, well, the world's problems.

Earth has a LOT of problems. climate change, world hunger, poaching, pesticides, ect.

what annoys me is that humans are greedy. why is making money always more important than helping others? if everyone treated everyone else as equals and shared with them, so many people would be happy. lives would be saved. 

i'm ranting, but this is what this thread is for. 

-Darkvine  

submitted by Darkvine
(July 7, 2022 - 8:43 pm)

I've found that Solving the World's Problem generally comes down to recognizing that something doesn't have to do with you, then deciding if it's a "This is none of your business, so you should leave these innocent people alone unless you know how to support them" situation or a "This is not happening to you, but you can still help these people and you should" situation. So with prejudice and defining a person based off things that really don't matter at all rather than respecting who they are, it's a "none of your business" thing, and with homelessness, world hunger, deportation, ect., ect, it's a "help these people" thing. The problem is, people don't mind their own business when they should, and do the complete opposite when they shouldn't. So we need to work on that. However, we also need to be careful not to completely ignore a community of people we don't connect with, but instead support them and try to understand them. It's all about balance, in the end, and respect. It's about realizing that there are still millions of problems in the world and we can get better by looking at everyone's ideas and deciding what works and what doesn't. Most of all, it's about listening and putting others before yourself, because if everyone did that then everybody would win. Is that about right? 

submitted by Periwinkle, age Pi, Somewhere in the stars
(July 7, 2022 - 9:43 pm)
submitted by PeriTOP!, age Pi, Somewhere topping threads
(July 7, 2022 - 10:32 pm)

Yessss ranting thread

Ughh you're so right, humans are so greedy. Like, the main reason we aren't doing enough for climate change is that car, oil, mining etc. companies are super rich and powerful, and care about their money more than about saving the planet. Or they just convince themselves it's not real, because they don't want a reason to stop doing what gives them money.

submitted by Lupine
(July 7, 2022 - 11:12 pm)

But of course. *sigh*

Please don't fall into the trap of communism, though, Darkvine. It never seems to work as intended. It would truly be great if everyone could work hard and get "equal" wealth distribution, but there is indeed a difference between equality and equity, which shows the cracks in all systems we've had so far. Technically, capitalism is more fair, where those who work hard and have skills get more, and those who don't or can't remain in a lower position; however, I admit that it's still a very flawed system and opportunity I not provided to all in the same capacity. It's not optimal, and it's perhaps not right, but I don't think, due to the inherent issues that humanity brings upon itself, things can get much better.

Furthermore, time after time it's been shown that those who give to those lower down are so much more likely to be taken advantage of, and/or will have the hand that feeds bitten; whether that be due to jealousy, greed, an easy way out, feeling it's not enough, justifying that it's okay because the higher-ups have already had such a good life, or seeing the higher-ups as patronising for "gifting" their privilege onto those they see as lower down. If you struggled your way to the top, and felt like it was a mostly fair game, why would you ever risk losing it all to help some potentially ungrateful and unfit lazy-bones up? Why do you owe them anything when you've used your own skills to get yourself up here?

To be clear, I'm not saying I agree with this way of thinking, or think it's fair or right -- I simply hope to give and gain more insight into some of these huge issues. I'm not sure we can really ever make an enormous change for the best, but it doesn't hurt to consider that causes, reason(s) things stay this way, different perspectives and ways things connect, etc., just to better understand and perhaps even act in the future to remedy these injustices. 

Remember things are almost always more complex than they might seem on surface level. If you really want to make a difference, do your research, be sure to challenge your own assumptions and beliefs, and of course, think realistically as you move forward with your plans. That doesn't mean you can't follow your dreams, or that nothing you do will matter in the long run; it only means that you have to have actual workable well-thought-out ideas and means, even if no one else has done it quite like you before, and you have to forge your own path forward. You can most certainly get there if you make up your mind to do it, so chin up! You got this! :D

submitted by Jaybells, Lost in the Universe
(July 8, 2022 - 6:53 am)

"It's not my problem". Have you ever heard that phrase? Well, it's not true. Because to solve the world's problems we have to recognize that if you have a problem, I have a problem. If anyone has a problem, everybody has a problem. And that's because we're all in the same boat! (rephrased from a story in the book Capturing the Moon to fit this thread)

 

I'm really worried about littering. Once I was in a pool, and I saw: a) some kind of beanbag toy in the drainage thing (I was able to get it out and give it to someone working there so they could return it) and b) two plastic water bottles in the drainage of the jacuzzi (is that how you spell it?). One major tip is: don't litter!

 

But remember:  If you have a problem, I have a problem. If anyone has a problem, everybody has a problem. And that's because we're all in the same boat! (The boat is analogous to Earth)

submitted by Golden Lion Tamarin
(July 8, 2022 - 8:44 am)

Wow, that was fast posting! Thanks, @Admin

 

You're welcome! - Admin

submitted by Golden Lion Tamarin, amazed at fast posting
(July 8, 2022 - 9:06 am)

Oh yeah, and there is the whole "equality vs. equity" thing. Equality is when everyone gets the same thing. Equity is when everyone gets the thing they need to succeed in life. Have any of you ever heard of that metaphor about the adult, the child, and the smaller child trying to watch a baseball game over a fence? 

submitted by Periwinkle, age Pi, Somewhere in the stars
(July 8, 2022 - 11:10 am)

I agree with your 100%!

Earth has so many issues and barely anyone knows about it or acknowledges it! 

As for climate change, it's serious! The temperature anomaly is getter greater every year, and there's more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Animals are dying! This is kind of a lesser-known species, but the whooping crane that lives in wetlands and swamps in the US and Canada. Because of increased rain their eggs have been catching pneumonia and have been dying unhatched, so their populations are unstable. 

Also: the living conditions of other people! In Spanish we had to watch a documentary of how these people in the Sierras called the Raramuri have to walk for hours just to get to school! It's so ironic that people can make movies about these people but can't afford to help them lives better lives. 

It seems like we have become so focused on being the lastest, the greatest, and the best, that we've lost sight of our humanity and that's depressing. 

 

 

submitted by Leila, age 11, Panem
(July 8, 2022 - 3:26 pm)

This post is gonna be depressing, sorry. 

The really scary thing about climate change is how fast it seems to be spreading. I mean I'm just a kid, and I've already seen a lot of changes in the climate. Temperatures are hotter every year, there's less snow every winter, and worst of all, there are more and bigger wildfires every summer. I live in the west so we're always affected by the fires a lot; sometimes people we know have to evacuate , and then there's the depressing MONTHS of thick orange smoke. And just when I was in elementary school it was way better! At this rate, I don't even want to think about decades from now...

submitted by Lupine
(July 9, 2022 - 12:41 am)

I used to disregard climate change and think that anyway, if all the polar bears went extinct, it wouldn't affect me. In fact, I never bothered to learn about climate change at all, so I assumed it was all about saving a few animals in the Antarcic.

That was until yesterday.

I read a book on climate change and it totally revolutionized me, like books do. What's especially worrying is the fact that if all of the ice melts, then there will be a lot more water, since so much of the world's freshwater is locked up in glaciers. My book also says that eventually some of the U.S. might be underwater. And of course, the extreme heat means more fires and droughts. It's already dry enough where I live.

submitted by Lyric, California
(July 9, 2022 - 4:35 pm)

Indeed, many places like the whole of The Netherlands, Venice in Italy, parts of Australia and New Zealand (especially islands are pretty vulnerable; the U.K., Malaysia, the Philippines, etc.), many of the big cities in the U.S. such as NYC, Boston, New Orleans, Miami, etc., as well as many regions in South/Eastern Asia like India, Indonesia, China and Japan and are projected to be underwater within the next couple of decades at the rate we're going at contributing to climate change.

Very frightening prospect, is it not? And then plenty of other areas in the U.S. (particularly in the southern, central and western areas), Brazil, Australia and huge swaths of Asia (Including India and China, which is exacerbated by their incredibly high populations) and even more so Africa suffer from wildfires, droughts or periods where water (especially clean water) is terribly difficult to acquire. This disparity will only become worse with changes to worldwide climate patterns.

submitted by Jaybells, Lost, somewhere
(July 9, 2022 - 11:33 pm)

Climate change is a really big problem, but so is war. I just don't understand why people can't share the Earth and want to have their own laws for their own land and why can't they just agree? One of the amazing partial solutions is...

Enter: The language of Esperanto.

Esperanto is a really cool conlang invented by Dr. Zamenhof (I'm not sure what his first name is) in an attempt to create a language that everyone can speak because it is super simple and has connections to almost every language. For example, amiko means friend, and if you add mal- before a word it reverses the word, so malamiko means enemy. So, war is the malamiko of all of us CBers (unless it is a play war like the Lemming War or the Last to post War, then it is a amiko of us). If you have an a instead of an o at the end, then it makes it feminine, so amika means female friend. Just a short Esperanto lesson.

Maybe this is better discussed in the Languages thread, but I can't find it now and Esperanto is a partial solution to the problems.

 

Fun fact: Did you know that Esperanto was the second take of Dr. Zamenhof to create a universal language? The first take would have worked if his father didn't burn the papers (no seriously, that happened with it) 

submitted by Golden Lion Tamarin
(July 10, 2022 - 12:18 pm)

I think I've heard of that language before, but I didn't know much about it, so this was interesting! I wonder how many people actually speak it.

Whenever I start reading a book or watching a movie that kind of romanticizes war--like, makes it seem like this exciting, adventurous thing where the brave and loyal always win--or just fighting in general, it kind of sickens me...after learning more about everything that's happening in Ukraine, and in other parts of the world (don't forget the non-European countries that are also at war, like Afghanistan!) I can't believe people would want to read about fighting and killing for entertainment. The real world has enough horrible stuff in it; why do we have to glorify and romanticize that stuff and turn it into movies? 

submitted by Lupine
(July 21, 2022 - 7:52 pm)

Honestly, I think at this point the governments of the world are not going to manage to get anything solved, in fact mostly they're making things worse. If we want things to change, it'll have to be ordinary people who do things.

submitted by Poinsettia
(October 1, 2022 - 9:51 am)

*says in a Victorian era British accent* Oh I say, do be a good fellow and top now. We will have frightfully jolly larks if you do, and there'll be no end to what people post here, and you'll be a frightfully popular thread. Come along, there's a brick!

submitted by Poinsettia
(October 1, 2022 - 9:52 am)