What is the most important issue of our time?

[Big!]

What do you think is the most important issue this generation is faced with solving? Is it terrorism? War? Global Warming? Genocide? Energy? Or something else? Please elaborate.

Big!

[Memento Mori]

Possibly our need for an abundant energy source.

[TombStone]

Bureaucracy...I think when this is gone, we can actually start with solving all those things mentioned above.

[Hippopotamus]

Integration here in Holland, all the bullshit about it annoys me and the answer/solution is so simple; let Geert Wilders shut his mouth, stop all the negative media-attention and everybody needs to stop talking about "Them and Us".. En voila, problem solved!

[TombStone]

I dissagree Hippo, you're right about wilders being way to aggresive, but here in drachten there's alot of problems with immigrants (stabbings, fights etc.). Something needs to be done, we can't let them go their way. I'm not saying it's all of them, but we need to stop treating the muslimpromblem like it's a no-go zone.

[Hippopotamus]

Hmm i think the situation now is an effect of all the negative talking, negative attention and thoughts of all the dutchies. Of course there are immigrants that just are criminals, but there are also dutch people that are the same.

I think it's a mental issue; immigrants that feel like 'others', dutch people that think bad of them (majority are people from the flatland(platteland:p) that don't know immigrants theirself and only see stuff on the news and base their opinion on that) and politicians that say that we have to solve the problem but don't know how

I think if immigrants are coming to holland and we threat them with respect and we understand their religion more, they will feel more comfortable and do less illegal stuff/less criminality.

I am good in giving bad metaphors, but if I go to a shop/restaurant and every worker there looks at me like i am a boogie-man and i am a bad person and don't threat me with respect, i also would be like: fuck you i never gonna buy something here, screw you i am out of here! And don't threat them/their stuff with respect
Again, bad metaphor...

Solution imo: We have to close the gap between 'us' and 'them' and 'we' have to try to understand 'them' and 'they' have to try to understand 'us'!

(=

[Memento Mori]

It is a bad analagy, as in the analagy you walk out the shop, where in actualy situation, the immagrants mostly stay aroundand sponge from the economy, or commit crime, or both.

[Hippopotamus]

Yeah bad one, I know ;)

Anyway, hope you understand what i am trying to say!

[Big!]

Solution imo: We have to close the gap between 'us' and 'them' and 'we' have to try to understand 'them' and 'they' have to try to understand 'us'!

Well articulated.

[TheHitMan]

For me, it's not dying. Killing ourselves pretty much covers all the grounds we need to work on. I hate to sound hippie but peace solves pretty much everything

[Big!]

Peace with our neighbors, peace with other countries, peace with the environment... Yeah, pretty much covers everything. :)

Big!

[mrnicksta]

definitely the biggest issue is a renewable, sustainable, eco-friendly and viable energy source. this would prettty much eradiacte all other issues: global warming and war for resources for example.

my brother showed me some crazy book the other day. it was written by some guy who "reverse-engineered" the great pyramids and believes that they were not giant burial chambers, but they were some form of ancient power source - where the power is generated by harnessing the earth's natural harmonic frequency! sounds like one crazy theory, but interesting no doubt..

[TombStone]

No offence hippo, cause i do agree with your perspective, but i've been in schools with about 2 fights a day
(+ Thieving, extortion, 2 stabbings etc) and it always involved immigrants/muslims. I'm not a racist at all and i do respect anyone who come's here and really makes an effort to integrate. Like african refugees who come here and are baffled by all the oppurtunities and grab them with both hands. I love that we can do that for them. But the problem with immigrant streetcrimes, lies not with "us" talking smack about them and not creating a "we", it's about "us" as a country, being to soft against the wrongdoers who have no interrest at all to create a "we". I don't know what the situation is like in Tiburg, but over here it's really getting out of hand.

[Hippopotamus]

I live for a short time in Tilburg, and I am only here for uni Journalism, so don't know much about the situation (journalism is a study with almost none 'allochtonen' and very friendly people;))!
But on my former school there were also problems with immigrants, but not more than we had with "Lonsdalers". Personally I disliked those 'Lonsdale'-scumbags more..
I also had troubles with some "allochtonen" and there was a small group that ruïned it for the rest but I also was friends with some really cool and nice people!
So, that's probably the difference between me and you, I never experienced it THAT much

But I agree the country is too soft to people/immigrants that do criminal stuff and such, they have to punish them more!
On my study me and a muslim from the group were responsible for news about integration/multi culti and stuff, so i think alot about the issue. I just think it's just the problem that 'we' are too "childish" to change our view on 'them' but what you say is also right: 'they' (at least a big group) also doesn't care about creating a 'we'..
I think it's just something that probably will never know a precise solution and racism/religious/etnic differences will probably never dissappear! (too bad)

[Je$t]

For me, and being an American. I think the "biggest issue" that we have. Is the war over in Iraq. We're continuing to send troops over, for at LEAST fifteen months. And who knows when they'll be back, or when we'll just pull out of there altogether. I think that's our biggest issue though, honestly. Because it's all this he said, she said bullshit going back and forth about bringing them back out, or keeping them in. And it's effecting millions of lives. And the fact that they're thinking about starting a "draft" is adding to the complications of things even more. But, if I don't stop now, I'll keep going so I'm gonna leave it at that.

[c4m]

Energy will be the biggest one, almost guaranteed. It ties into the "War On Terror". My Dad has 10 acres where we could grow a little food, hunt fallow deer, etc. I think I'll be alright, if we set into a depression. As long as we don't go totalitarian.