Can’t point out this enough. Very very true 
Hence the greatest priority should be education, only great “teachers” can learn the adults of tomorrow about nuance, respect for other opinions, a middle way, mind over matter, satisfaction without greed/craving.
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My goodness!
This! Just because there are two sides does not mean that both sides are valid and you should seek a compromise. No, if we want to still have a liveable world in the (almost) near future, we should act radically now, there’s no way around it.
Well, it’s almost already too late to act now, I understand making education a priority, but effective action should be one too
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Absolutely … but will it happen?
Spoiler … I am not a friend of conspiracy theories … just as a couple of questions:
- Which person in power of today could expect to stay in power and conserve accoustomed privileges, if the world population would change to be more educated, less prone to manipulation, self-assured, or even wise?
- Which leader of a religion of today could keep all the believers to believe that HE knows what the god of that religion wants?
- Which political leader of today could impress a population to stay in power?
- Which industrial leader could exploit employees without providing fair treatment and payment?
Don’t get me wrong, not all leaders are bad in this world, but there are some very bad indeed.
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Great topic and great points.
I personally spend way too much time thinking about these things. I went vegetarian in 1996 reading the booklet from Moby’s Everything Is Wrong. Still thankfull to Moby for that. Kinda lost my way during the years and started slipping but for the last five years I’ve been living with a vegetarian girlfriend and went meatless again. I really enjoy cooking with vegetables and nowadays it’s very very easy comparing to mid nineties. We don’t have kids, we haven’t flown in years and I buy basically everything except my underwear secondhand. I love going through yard sales, flea markets and second hand shops. I get anxiety in shopping malls.
All of my synths are bought second hand except the Digitone but I’m not immune to GAS. Far from it. Just today I watched a Sonic State video of an upcoming polysynth and felt the tingling sensation. Luckily I don’t make enough money to buy 2500€ synths. I’ve voluntarily downgraded my worklife. I only work for 2-3 days a week for a small media studio and spend the rest of my time learning stuff, reading books and doing my own small work stuff. I’d be completely happy making 1200-1500 euros a month. Everything above that is really excess.
I used to be a dj and for that reason I have around 7000-8000 records lying around in my study. I have a monthly “clubnight” that I get paid for in record shop gift certificates so I do still buy some new ones maybe once a month but mainly I buy second hand cds for one euro each from Goodwill etc. Don’t really care for the streaming services.
The biggest regret I have is buying a “summer car” last summer, now it’s become an autumn car and a winter car. We were supposed to get rid of it in the end of the summer but kinda forgot. The reason we bought it was that we have this allotment (small cabin with a little lot around it) where we spend the summers and try to grow our own veggies. Building stuff like growing boxes or glass houses and getting rid of old tree trunks etc. is a lot easier when you have a car. We’ve had the cabin for 3 years now and it’s been a revelation. No pesticides, no poisons, no nothing. We try to give a good place for insects to do their thing and in return they do pollination for us and make our tomatoes etc. grow. Nature is truly amazing.
We’ve been buying this biodiesel for our car since the beginning. It’s supposedly made out of leftover food and stuff like that and it’s environmental impact is told to be lower than an electric car but other sources have told me that there’s palm oil in it too. So that’s fucked too. Nothing is ever perfect.
Yes, I sound like a hippie. And I guess I am too. I’m an old and angry hippie. It’s hard living in these times of stupidity and fake news. It’s getting grimmer every day.
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It’s never too late for education, I guess … I hope. To me it seems the adults of today, all together don’t seem to find solution(s) or are ready to do what is needed. If we teach the children, there is hope for humanity. Maybe the universe (without caring) is almost done with humans and there will be other life somewhere (or there already is, we might not be so important at all 
). In the meanwhile I try to think, reflect, feel and act conform my personal reach without becoming a fundamentalist myself.
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The CO2 footprint of your average continent-hopping DJ must be through the roof. I don’t know how they can live with themselves.
To open this topic to how music is manufactured and distributed also has an impact:
Vinyl:
- Modern records typically contain around 135g of PVC material with a carbon footprint of 0.5kg of CO₂
- Sales of 4.1m records would produce 1.9 thousand tonnes of CO₂, taking transport and packaging into account, the entire footprint is equivalent to almost 400 people per year
CD’s:
- Can’t be recycled because they’re made of mixed materials that are difficult and uneconomical to separate into their component parts for recycling
- Also encased in fragile polycarbonate cases, which, despite being a single material, aren’t widely recycled
- Just think about the impact in the mid 90’s, 50% of all CD’s produced worldwide were for AOL installers, how many of those going to landfill
Digital:
- Listening to streamed music using a hifi sound system is estimated to use 107 kilowatt hours of electricity a year, costing about £15. In contrast a CD player uses 34.7 kilowatt hours a year and costs £5
- If you listen to a track a couple of times, streaming is the best option. If you listen repeatedly, a physical copy is best. Streaming an album over the internet more than 27 times will likely use more energy than it takes to produce and manufacture the same CD
Source: https://theconversation.com/the-environmental-impact-of-music-digital-records-cds-analysed-108942
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I´ve never actually looked into it and it might be a dumb question but could you recycle old vinyl records and press new ones out of the material?
Yes, but I like hippies, even if I am no hippie myself. It’s at least one way to try something better.
Please don’t do this to yourself. There is potential. I have children and it seems that they care for this world, more than I did, when I was their age 
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The idea of recycling vinyl isn’t new. Labels like Chicago’s TRAX used recycled vinyl to press some of their 1980s releases, but the results were not always well received. Vinyl records are made from (PVC) pellets, which are melted and pressed into disc form. The material’s chemical and molecular attributes have a huge impact on the audible quality of music playback, and a disc made with low-grade or impure raw materials will sound terrible.
More: https://medium.com/novation-notes/making-music-sustainable-d700b034a3ab
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True that.
Everybody can be a “teacher”, leaving children exposed to only 3rd party education was never a good idea.
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I see the difference between people with a strong mind, reason, knowledge, and maybe a non-mainstream sight of things and “fundamentalists” as follows.
The fundamentalists I have had the opportunity to meet had a “strong believe”, which sometimes was backed by “half-truths”, sometimes they had irrational opinions, there was no option to discuss matter of fact, and there was no option that anybody saying differntly could be right.
Thankyou for the clarification
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Exactly … and there is more … you just pointed out that everybody can have an impact, if only he “teaches” the right thing to one other person.
BTW this has been always one method to bring down a regime. 1989 the citizens of the former GDR brought down “the wall” in Berlin.
Sure, I agree with you on that, It just feels that it implies we must place our hopes in future generations whereas I think we must act right now.
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Both for sure! Without the children the changes of today can be very short -lived.
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Yes, I cringe everytime I scroll those post of “environmentally aware” DJ that are in a new continent every 3 days. Kevkoko (ex-Fjaak) had a great post about this on his, but I hope the industry would realise this.
Yes, my wife lived on the Western side at that time, my friend and neighbour grew up in east Berlin. We will eat and drink a bottle of champagne with our families on new year’s eve 
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I do worry about the rise of landfill synths. I’ve been guilty of buying/flipping budget gear but I’m trying to be a little more selective with my purchases and consider the longevity. It would be great to see some of the big name synth manufacturers adopt Apple-style recycling programmes.