Broken
 

So many things in this world are "broken" ~~ people go hungry or get sick, governments or organizations go bad, and suffering happens.

What do you see in your experience, community, or ken that is broken? Something you wish some enterprizing individual, company, or organization should fix?

If you could dedicate your life to fixing a single problem, what would it be?

I am beginning to doubt the feasibility to correct it, but I DO believe that over 50% of the planets ills would automatically disappear and the roots of most ALL other "broken" issues would be 1/3 the challenge.

In a word, POPULATION.

That's a good answer PF.

Not necessarily in my neighborhood...but for anyone to be homeless is a big problem to me! I do my little part in participating in Habitat for Humanity but if I could I'd make sure no one ever goes homeless again!

The Avian Flu Pandemic will soon help your solution, PF.

For me it's children being raised in abusive families. We are rasing an entire community of mean abused people.

We have a hemisphere full of religious disharmony, territorial aspirations and ethnic cleansing.

This is global abuse which overshadows but does not take away from local abuses.

While I don't disagree ^^. I have to start somewhere.

That is it.

In the words of Linus van Pelt, "I love mankind...it's People I can't stand!"

If it can be made by Man, it can be broken the same way...sometimes I just wanna make it all go away, too...but as far as feasible solutions are concerned, I would agree that Habitat for Humanity seems to be one of the best at living up to the ideal of "think globally, act locally"...
(tho I'm ashamed to say I've yet to even pick up a hammer on their behalf, but I do gladly patronize businesses that support them.)

Education for me. There are so many kids and adults that fall through the cracks. If you're not traditionally book smart -- and, God help you if you don't get lucky with teachers who care -- it's possible to go through school and not learn much.

Better to teach a man how to catch fish than to give him the fish, I say. Help teach people good life skills and do on the job training and focus on the "at risk" kids to raise the bar for everyone.

This world IMHO is becoming about the haves and the have-nots. A dangerous situation if you ask me.

Self responsibility, I burnt myself be cause the coffee was to hot, not because I was driving with it between my legs. People need to be responsible for their own actions, not blame everything and everybody else. And it starts early, Johnny didnot pass because the teacher did not teach him or was it really because Johnny did not try to learn, he was there just to be with his friends.

Amen osuche!!

i recently read an on-line article which held forth that the models are flawed and the future estimates are much too conservative. perhaps off by 25 to 30 percent. :yikes:

anyway, while i agree that the pop is getting too big for our planet i also see no way of stopping its overwhelming increase without the use of eugenics, sterilization or euthanasia and i must say i don't think the genpop is gonna find favor with most of that shit. omg! soylent green is people!!!!! :rofl:

and to get back to the question, since the inevitable colonization of outerspace will take care of our population issues :D, i guess i think that the best thing i could do is to dabble in a little gene work and find the thingy that turns on tolerance, and the doohicky that enables mercy and empathy. fix those and THEN all other ills all but dissapear.

but then i would have to begin methodically checking it in every human born using the doctor’s without borders org as my front, which i would have filled with my minions over the course of several decades as i built it up into a multinational policy making juggernaut. then, someday, my altruistic goal would be discovered and misinterpreted and the population would revolt and go berzerk because while manipulating their genes i accidentally screwed something else up and now they’ve gone crazy and after the melee is over only about 1/5 of the population is left standing.

hey, i solved the population problem!

here's my real opinion. i agree with osuche mostly. education is the key but not the book-smart education part so much, just the life skills part, and they need to be culture specific, too. teaching a zulu how to fix a nutritious meal for a family using a pound of processed cheese and a can of tuna isn't useful but teaching him about diseases--more specifically how not to get them---is very useful. guidance won't always fix the bigot or the zealot but it will help curb abuse, hunger, sickness, and intolerance.
(although if we could fix the fact that peeps don't give a shit without any bad side effects, i still think it's a great ieda)

:thumb:


Everyone knows I'm a huge advocate of Habitat and that I dedicate a lot of time & effort to their mission. I think they're a great organization that works hard towards solving a real problem.

On that note, I believe that contributing to any cause is valuable. Getting involved makes such a difference. It could be anything from working with an organized group, to picking up trash while you're walking around your block. Realizing there are problems that need to be addressed is a big step towards solving them. Once you're there...it really is a small step to get involved.