Love, leads to
sex, leads to
babies, leads to
overpopulation, leads to
scarcity, leads to
bickering, leads to
war, leads to
death, leads to
hate, leads to
exhaustion, leads to
reparation, leads to
forgiveness, leads to
peace, leads to
love, leads to
Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Friday, January 14
Tuesday, September 22
Multiple Me
I've had two friends from high school that are also INTPs join the Navy and prosper as officers. Now I may seem like a green hippie iconoclast, but in many ways I'm moderate, and it's only the internet that transforms me into something radical. I revel in my contradictions, and one of them is that I absolutely love games of all sorts, from board games to video games to card games to sports. Anything with rules, where people can compete, and where resources must be positioned for maximum effectiveness intrigues me.
Where this skill is useful is in any arena where I need to strategize about what the best possible course of action is to win any sort of engagement, be it science, war, business, or anywhere where it is necessary to not look at individual encounters, but the bigger picture. I tend to look in the long run at situations, theorize many different solutions, then plan accordingly.
I tend to spend my free time playing games where I can use this skill, like in games such as World of Warcraft (until recently), or Team Fortress 2 (where I can play whatever my team needs to win.)
What this means is that I could have flourished in the military. I can see that. I'm not going to use this space to disapprove of those that did. I'm not anti-military, any more than I'm anti-American. I love this country, and I respect the fact that someone else is putting their butt on the line every day for my benefit. I have the right to question where and when and how the military is being used, but it would be foolhardy of me to suggest that this country or any country does away with their armed forces entirely.
I think the one reason why I didn't enlist was the same reason why I didn't stay a Chemistry major when I first failed out of college: I just didn't like who I was surrounded by whenever I entered a math or science class. The lab professor for one particular class was a stodgy old guy who would stare, scrutinizing every time I wasn't absolutely perfect with a beaker and a Bunsen burner. I felt like every student in every class was a robot, and I was absolutely bored out of my wits.
The break came when I started taking radio classes, then creative writing, then art. That was it for me. Cute girls plus no right answer plus randomness appreciated? Sign me up for that!
I went back to community college, did theatre and a little photography and television and choir (which is where I met my wife). Did random jobs like pizza delivery driver and video game testing, I measured drainage ditches in Carmel by the Sea, and at some point my wife made me go back to school and eventually get my Creative Arts degree. I now do random art and take care of two kids.
Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like had I zigged instead of zagged. Maybe in a parallel universe there is another me on a submarine, wondering what it would have been like had he taken those art classes.
Where this skill is useful is in any arena where I need to strategize about what the best possible course of action is to win any sort of engagement, be it science, war, business, or anywhere where it is necessary to not look at individual encounters, but the bigger picture. I tend to look in the long run at situations, theorize many different solutions, then plan accordingly.
I tend to spend my free time playing games where I can use this skill, like in games such as World of Warcraft (until recently), or Team Fortress 2 (where I can play whatever my team needs to win.)
What this means is that I could have flourished in the military. I can see that. I'm not going to use this space to disapprove of those that did. I'm not anti-military, any more than I'm anti-American. I love this country, and I respect the fact that someone else is putting their butt on the line every day for my benefit. I have the right to question where and when and how the military is being used, but it would be foolhardy of me to suggest that this country or any country does away with their armed forces entirely.
I think the one reason why I didn't enlist was the same reason why I didn't stay a Chemistry major when I first failed out of college: I just didn't like who I was surrounded by whenever I entered a math or science class. The lab professor for one particular class was a stodgy old guy who would stare, scrutinizing every time I wasn't absolutely perfect with a beaker and a Bunsen burner. I felt like every student in every class was a robot, and I was absolutely bored out of my wits.
The break came when I started taking radio classes, then creative writing, then art. That was it for me. Cute girls plus no right answer plus randomness appreciated? Sign me up for that!
I went back to community college, did theatre and a little photography and television and choir (which is where I met my wife). Did random jobs like pizza delivery driver and video game testing, I measured drainage ditches in Carmel by the Sea, and at some point my wife made me go back to school and eventually get my Creative Arts degree. I now do random art and take care of two kids.
Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like had I zigged instead of zagged. Maybe in a parallel universe there is another me on a submarine, wondering what it would have been like had he taken those art classes.
Saturday, September 12
Giants on the Horizon
I watched "The Iron Giant" with my son today.
He'd already seen it, and I could go into this whole tirade about the grandparents letting my three year old watch a PG movie without asking us, but...eh, what the hell. I'm not overly concerned with violence and kids because I'm not a believer in the purity and sanctity of the minds of our youth. It means more work for me explaining to him why the giant robot was shooting guns, but whatever: I have to pick my battles.
SPOILERS: (Though the movie came out ten years ago, so I shouldn't really have to warn anyone.)
So the giant robot really was an "evil" alien construct sent to kill all humanity. Or at least destroy anyone that shoots at it. Though I briefly touched on this before, I think that it's a fair assumption that anything resembling life as we know it would be adequately capable of defending itself. Porcupines have quills and roses have thorns for a reason. Lots of things have the ability to run really fast, and its not to win a medal in a race.
Pacifism at its extreme form is unheard of in the animal kingdom, and is not a viable long term survival trait. The only reason why we toy with it as humans is for relationships with other humans (and for some people, animals with human characteristics, like rabbits and seals. You don't see many people campaigning to cease the cultivation of wheat, for example, despite the fact that the wheat is probably at least a little discontent whenever harvest time comes around.)
Apparently though, in the universe of "The Iron Giant", consciousness gives beings the capacity for nonviolence. Though the robot has one major advantage: it eats nonliving metallic objects for sustenance. It doesn't need to ingest other lifeforms to survive, unlike humans, who are technically parasites. (Agent Smith is right, Mr. Anderson!)
What would a photosynthetic plant-like alien life form think of us as we continually conquer all earthly foliage and shape it to our whims? Will they see us as cruel taskmasters, who keep soybeans and corn in bondage?
What would an intelligent single cell alien life form think of vaccines and antibiotics? How would a bug-like life form react when they found out about Raid?
Our consciousness cannot unshackle us from the constraints of our physical form. We cause other beings harm with and without our consent. The happy lie is that plants and bacteria and flies don't have feelings or consciousness, which is absolutely unprovable. No one has any idea what a cockroach thinks about in its tiny little brain as my three year old squishes it into the sidewalk. I'm not saying that their awareness is as advanced as ours, I'm saying that they might have a simple awareness, which is still awareness, regardless of complexity.
How would we react to an advanced alien civilization, a million years advanced from our own, that decides, "Bah, these creatures called humans can't be conscious (because they aren't as evolutionarily advanced as us) so let's squish them. Who cares? They can't be aware of their demise, so whatever. Drop the graviton bombs and lets clear the place."
It's why a part of me dreads the day SETI hears something: I'm not sure whoever's talking is friendly.
He'd already seen it, and I could go into this whole tirade about the grandparents letting my three year old watch a PG movie without asking us, but...eh, what the hell. I'm not overly concerned with violence and kids because I'm not a believer in the purity and sanctity of the minds of our youth. It means more work for me explaining to him why the giant robot was shooting guns, but whatever: I have to pick my battles.
SPOILERS: (Though the movie came out ten years ago, so I shouldn't really have to warn anyone.)
So the giant robot really was an "evil" alien construct sent to kill all humanity. Or at least destroy anyone that shoots at it. Though I briefly touched on this before, I think that it's a fair assumption that anything resembling life as we know it would be adequately capable of defending itself. Porcupines have quills and roses have thorns for a reason. Lots of things have the ability to run really fast, and its not to win a medal in a race.
Pacifism at its extreme form is unheard of in the animal kingdom, and is not a viable long term survival trait. The only reason why we toy with it as humans is for relationships with other humans (and for some people, animals with human characteristics, like rabbits and seals. You don't see many people campaigning to cease the cultivation of wheat, for example, despite the fact that the wheat is probably at least a little discontent whenever harvest time comes around.)
Apparently though, in the universe of "The Iron Giant", consciousness gives beings the capacity for nonviolence. Though the robot has one major advantage: it eats nonliving metallic objects for sustenance. It doesn't need to ingest other lifeforms to survive, unlike humans, who are technically parasites. (Agent Smith is right, Mr. Anderson!)
What would a photosynthetic plant-like alien life form think of us as we continually conquer all earthly foliage and shape it to our whims? Will they see us as cruel taskmasters, who keep soybeans and corn in bondage?
What would an intelligent single cell alien life form think of vaccines and antibiotics? How would a bug-like life form react when they found out about Raid?
Our consciousness cannot unshackle us from the constraints of our physical form. We cause other beings harm with and without our consent. The happy lie is that plants and bacteria and flies don't have feelings or consciousness, which is absolutely unprovable. No one has any idea what a cockroach thinks about in its tiny little brain as my three year old squishes it into the sidewalk. I'm not saying that their awareness is as advanced as ours, I'm saying that they might have a simple awareness, which is still awareness, regardless of complexity.
How would we react to an advanced alien civilization, a million years advanced from our own, that decides, "Bah, these creatures called humans can't be conscious (because they aren't as evolutionarily advanced as us) so let's squish them. Who cares? They can't be aware of their demise, so whatever. Drop the graviton bombs and lets clear the place."
It's why a part of me dreads the day SETI hears something: I'm not sure whoever's talking is friendly.
Thursday, September 3
Teaching History Backwards
Education has failed me.
I say this with great trepidation, because I respect and admire teachers, both as a whole and individually. However, just because I admire and exalt scholarly thought, doesn't mean I think the institution is perfect. I wholeheartedly support the notion that a society cannot be both democratic and uninformed at the same time, which is why it pains me to admit that I, like many Americans, am ignorant.
I know absolutely nothing about the twentieth century past the end of WWII. Every time a class was supposedly about "United States History", we'd generally start at the colonies, and end around Reconstruction, or possibly touch on the Industrial Revolution. Then the semester would end, and the timeline would cease. This pattern continued throughout middle school and high school, and then in college, where nothing about current events mattered in order to graduate.
Apparently the U.S. has been involved in nothing of interest in modern times. The bombing of Bosnian Serbs my the senior year of high school was not as important as me learning calculus or running a mile in under eight minutes. I did not need to know anything about the Middle East in order to obtain a college diploma.
I know of no reasons as to why other places in the world might have dissident views concerning the U.S. Especially not concerning our "defense" budget, or that we have the most powerful and advanced military in the world. Or that this amount is actually a small percentage compared to our GDP (4%). Though that leads to the question of why our GDP is so much larger than the rest of the world. (Not counting the European Union, though that would be a great discussion topic too.)
To a certain extent, it's not the fault of the teachers and administrators, since the curriculum seems rooted in the tired old cave paintings and pyramids, Greeks, Romans, ah, the Dark Ages, how sad, Colonization, and Independence! treadmill due to what society wants. (And by society I mean you and me.)
I think the issue here is twofold. First: educators want to stay away from anything politically charged. That means anything recent gets ignored, because no school board wants angry parents rioting when their kids' teachers cover the Vietnam War. (Which in Vietnam is called "Resistance War Against America", or the American War.) No one gives a crap about which Pharaoh boinked which handmaiden, or whether the U.S. declared war on Mexico in 1846, since everyone involved at this point is dead.
Second: people have double-standards concerning adolescents. On one hand, society expects young adults to magically transform into thinking adults at the age of eighteen, while keeping them blissfully innocent (ignorant) of anything actually important up until that time.
Concerning the first point, I absolutely agree. Education should not be in the business of peddling ideologies. However, this does not mean that an objective mention of current events is beyond the scope of a school setting. Why can't teachers give the facts, without endorsing one particular side or the other?
As for the second, how can we entrust the future to our children without giving them the tools necessary to make informed decisions? They don't have the luxury of being innocent, especially when they must make adult choices, which cannot be framed in terms of demonizing one camp or the other. In a true democracy, no one group can hate another, or else the entire process fails.
I propose that every class with the brand of History on it do a complete 180 degree turn. Instead of starting with some random event far back in time, which has zero bearing on today, every history teacher should start with today. Then work backwards. Then students can see what is happening now, then travel backwards to yesterday in order to explain today, and then look at the yesterday before that, and the yesterday before that, and so on.
For example, we are in Iraq. Give the situation as it is occurring today. Then step back in time to 2003 and the invasion, and the circumstances surrounding it. Then push back further to every related incident with Iraq, going backwards with the First Gulf war, and the instability in the region due to the establishment of the state of Israel and the Zionist movement, and the Cold War.
This type of backwards thinking, where we anchor ourselves in the present, then work toward the reasons why things got to be the way they are, is the only way that we can free ourselves and our society from the shackles of ignorance and partisan thinking, where one person's freedom fighter is another's terrorist, because none of us really know what is going on because no one told us, for fear of giving us the truth.
If we aren't working with the truth, then how can we possibly work together in the future?
I say this with great trepidation, because I respect and admire teachers, both as a whole and individually. However, just because I admire and exalt scholarly thought, doesn't mean I think the institution is perfect. I wholeheartedly support the notion that a society cannot be both democratic and uninformed at the same time, which is why it pains me to admit that I, like many Americans, am ignorant.
I know absolutely nothing about the twentieth century past the end of WWII. Every time a class was supposedly about "United States History", we'd generally start at the colonies, and end around Reconstruction, or possibly touch on the Industrial Revolution. Then the semester would end, and the timeline would cease. This pattern continued throughout middle school and high school, and then in college, where nothing about current events mattered in order to graduate.
Apparently the U.S. has been involved in nothing of interest in modern times. The bombing of Bosnian Serbs my the senior year of high school was not as important as me learning calculus or running a mile in under eight minutes. I did not need to know anything about the Middle East in order to obtain a college diploma.
I know of no reasons as to why other places in the world might have dissident views concerning the U.S. Especially not concerning our "defense" budget, or that we have the most powerful and advanced military in the world. Or that this amount is actually a small percentage compared to our GDP (4%). Though that leads to the question of why our GDP is so much larger than the rest of the world. (Not counting the European Union, though that would be a great discussion topic too.)
To a certain extent, it's not the fault of the teachers and administrators, since the curriculum seems rooted in the tired old cave paintings and pyramids, Greeks, Romans, ah, the Dark Ages, how sad, Colonization, and Independence! treadmill due to what society wants. (And by society I mean you and me.)
I think the issue here is twofold. First: educators want to stay away from anything politically charged. That means anything recent gets ignored, because no school board wants angry parents rioting when their kids' teachers cover the Vietnam War. (Which in Vietnam is called "Resistance War Against America", or the American War.) No one gives a crap about which Pharaoh boinked which handmaiden, or whether the U.S. declared war on Mexico in 1846, since everyone involved at this point is dead.
Second: people have double-standards concerning adolescents. On one hand, society expects young adults to magically transform into thinking adults at the age of eighteen, while keeping them blissfully innocent (ignorant) of anything actually important up until that time.
Concerning the first point, I absolutely agree. Education should not be in the business of peddling ideologies. However, this does not mean that an objective mention of current events is beyond the scope of a school setting. Why can't teachers give the facts, without endorsing one particular side or the other?
As for the second, how can we entrust the future to our children without giving them the tools necessary to make informed decisions? They don't have the luxury of being innocent, especially when they must make adult choices, which cannot be framed in terms of demonizing one camp or the other. In a true democracy, no one group can hate another, or else the entire process fails.
I propose that every class with the brand of History on it do a complete 180 degree turn. Instead of starting with some random event far back in time, which has zero bearing on today, every history teacher should start with today. Then work backwards. Then students can see what is happening now, then travel backwards to yesterday in order to explain today, and then look at the yesterday before that, and the yesterday before that, and so on.
For example, we are in Iraq. Give the situation as it is occurring today. Then step back in time to 2003 and the invasion, and the circumstances surrounding it. Then push back further to every related incident with Iraq, going backwards with the First Gulf war, and the instability in the region due to the establishment of the state of Israel and the Zionist movement, and the Cold War.
This type of backwards thinking, where we anchor ourselves in the present, then work toward the reasons why things got to be the way they are, is the only way that we can free ourselves and our society from the shackles of ignorance and partisan thinking, where one person's freedom fighter is another's terrorist, because none of us really know what is going on because no one told us, for fear of giving us the truth.
If we aren't working with the truth, then how can we possibly work together in the future?
Tuesday, September 1
Dodging Bullets
One of the things about parenting is that you form some severe opinions about how the world works pretty quickly, especially when your three year old is talking about shooting guns. All of the half-baked, unformed, ethereal notions concerning morality manifest into rigid simplistic dogmas, like, "Keep your hands to yourself," and "Don't lie to me, kid." Abstract notions go out the window when you are A) in a rush and B) pissed off.
I've always been pretty moderate when it comes to firearms, but I can't be wishy-washy with a young mind, especially when it comes to something as potentially dangerous as this. Let me be clear: the issue is not with his curiosity, the problem is how I channel that towards a positive end.
Up until this point, he'd say something like "I shoot the bad guys," and I'd either ignore it, or treat it like Santa Claus, where I would shamefully hide the truth from my child because of social conventions. For some reason, some part of me thinks that giving him information about guns will somehow damage him, that there is an invisible line of age that he must cross, presumably around age ten when I can start to have "talks" with my kid about important issues.
So I spent all morning trying to figure out how I feel about gun control (since it's never really been an issue for me either way, since I can see both sides), and I found this passage from the DoJ of California:
"Talking to Children About Guns
Children are naturally curious about things they don't know about or think are "forbidden." When a child asks questions or begins to act out "gun play," you may want to address his or her curiosity by answering the questions as honestly and openly as possible. This will remove the mystery and reduce the natural curiosity. Also, it is important to remember to talk to children in a manner they can relate to and understand. This is very important, especially when teaching children about the difference between "real" and "make-believe." Let children know that, even though they may look the same, real guns are very different than toy guns. A real gun will hurt or kill someone who is shot."
Immediately I realize I've been going about it all wrong. If my kid was asking about rattlesnakes, I would know how to handle it. I would show him what they look like, explain to him why they are dangerous, and teach him what their proper environment is. I would play out with him exactly what the DoJ prescribes on the previous website, which in essence is "Don't touch it and go tell an adult." What works for rattlesnakes should work for guns, or for anything dangerous.
So I did. Liberal leanings be damned. I showed him what guns looked like, showed him what a bullet looked like, and explained to him the difference between real guns and fake. He understands that getting hit with a Nerf ball is fun, and getting hit with a real bullet means you die. (We've already had conversations about death, since I'm the official bug squisher, and the cats periodically leave us "presents".)
Then he said, "And when I grow up you can show me how to shoot a gun to shoot bad guys."
My leftist ideologies kicked into full gear at that point, and I said, "I don't shoot bad guys. Papa and Grandpa don't shoot bad guys. Uncle Mark doesn't shoot bad guys." He asked why Uncle Mark has shotguns. (I had told him Uncle Mark had them earlier.) I explained all about shooting ranges and clay pigeons. I explained that police officers shot bad guys, and that they have to go to school to do that.
Afterward, we played "Let's Pretend You Find a Real Gun," where I would put a pen in the other room, and he'd go find it. He'd then come and find me, saying, "Dada! I found a gun!"
I'd say, "Did you touch it?" and he'd say, "No!" and we'd yell "Yay!" Then I gave him a cookie.
I had a cookie too, since I think I dodged a bullet today.
I've always been pretty moderate when it comes to firearms, but I can't be wishy-washy with a young mind, especially when it comes to something as potentially dangerous as this. Let me be clear: the issue is not with his curiosity, the problem is how I channel that towards a positive end.
Up until this point, he'd say something like "I shoot the bad guys," and I'd either ignore it, or treat it like Santa Claus, where I would shamefully hide the truth from my child because of social conventions. For some reason, some part of me thinks that giving him information about guns will somehow damage him, that there is an invisible line of age that he must cross, presumably around age ten when I can start to have "talks" with my kid about important issues.
So I spent all morning trying to figure out how I feel about gun control (since it's never really been an issue for me either way, since I can see both sides), and I found this passage from the DoJ of California:
"Talking to Children About Guns
Children are naturally curious about things they don't know about or think are "forbidden." When a child asks questions or begins to act out "gun play," you may want to address his or her curiosity by answering the questions as honestly and openly as possible. This will remove the mystery and reduce the natural curiosity. Also, it is important to remember to talk to children in a manner they can relate to and understand. This is very important, especially when teaching children about the difference between "real" and "make-believe." Let children know that, even though they may look the same, real guns are very different than toy guns. A real gun will hurt or kill someone who is shot."
Immediately I realize I've been going about it all wrong. If my kid was asking about rattlesnakes, I would know how to handle it. I would show him what they look like, explain to him why they are dangerous, and teach him what their proper environment is. I would play out with him exactly what the DoJ prescribes on the previous website, which in essence is "Don't touch it and go tell an adult." What works for rattlesnakes should work for guns, or for anything dangerous.
So I did. Liberal leanings be damned. I showed him what guns looked like, showed him what a bullet looked like, and explained to him the difference between real guns and fake. He understands that getting hit with a Nerf ball is fun, and getting hit with a real bullet means you die. (We've already had conversations about death, since I'm the official bug squisher, and the cats periodically leave us "presents".)
Then he said, "And when I grow up you can show me how to shoot a gun to shoot bad guys."
My leftist ideologies kicked into full gear at that point, and I said, "I don't shoot bad guys. Papa and Grandpa don't shoot bad guys. Uncle Mark doesn't shoot bad guys." He asked why Uncle Mark has shotguns. (I had told him Uncle Mark had them earlier.) I explained all about shooting ranges and clay pigeons. I explained that police officers shot bad guys, and that they have to go to school to do that.
Afterward, we played "Let's Pretend You Find a Real Gun," where I would put a pen in the other room, and he'd go find it. He'd then come and find me, saying, "Dada! I found a gun!"
I'd say, "Did you touch it?" and he'd say, "No!" and we'd yell "Yay!" Then I gave him a cookie.
I had a cookie too, since I think I dodged a bullet today.
Wednesday, August 12
Overpopulation
Such a loaded topic, I know. It's difficult to separate personal convictions from public policy from hard science, since all are inevitably intertwined. Instead of advocating a heavy-handed dictum for how everyone "should" act, I'll instead loosely brainstorm seemingly disparate themes. And so on.
Every environment has a carrying capacity, which is the hard limit that particular space can support life. This is not a dispute. Just as rats in a cage will breed to the limit of their space, food, and water, so too does any organism on the planet. For the large majority of Earth's history, species have been limited to their environments based on their physiology. That is, if a bird had a beak that could break the shell on a specific type of nut, then they could thrive by eating it. This is called adaptation.
Up until humans that is. We bent the rules. We have these brains that let us alter ourselves and our environments faster than evolution would normally allow. Instead of waiting a million years for someone to mutate with a claw that can crack a walnut, some smartypants came up with a nutcracker. Instead of scavenging the land for berries, somebody had the bright idea that if we planted all the berries in one place they could pick them a lot faster.
Humans have the evolutionary ability to increase our carrying capacity. It doesn't mean we don't have one, it just means that every good idea some brainiac comes up with increases this number.
The inverse is also true. Without the technologies that we currently possess, the carrying capacity of humans would plummet. Without nutcrackers and modern agriculture, billions of people would find themselves starving to death.
At this point, I want to take something from religion, without getting too dogmatic. This idea is the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I'd like to discuss the Famine, War, Pestilence, and Death version. (The older version, in my opinion, was before they had a group consciousness about disease.)
The Four Horsemen seem an awful lot like personified regulating factors. (Just as God and Devil look an awful lot like personified Good and Evil.) That is, whenever humans start overpopulating, people starve, fight wars, get sick, or just plain die in all of the usual random ways. This idea is not new.
There is also the mistaken idea that we can somehow push back these factors forever, and that one day the carrying capacity of humans will be infinite. This ignores a fundamental fact: our ability to adapt is not perfect. There is a certain amount of compromise involved. Every technology we put forth has detriments, as technologies like the internal combustion engine, intensive farming, and nuclear power have shown.
Now it would be easy to say at this point, "Well, let's all just stop overpopulating. Let's use contraception." However, a disturbing popular culture reference to this idea is the movie Idiocracy, in which "smart" people stop breeding, and are overrun by "stupid" people. Or take a government imposed restriction on population like China, where the one-child policy leads to many ethical dilemmas. Even something as gentle as a one point difference in fertility rate has a huge effect on social policy. Check out the U.S. and Mexico on this map. It's no wonder why immigration reform is such a huge fiasco.
The elephant in the room is the uncomfortable idea that any group that applies self-regulation to their breeding will be replaced by those that don't. Which is why I refrain from cheerleading a solution when all of the options are distasteful, some more than others. This is a choice between many evils: allow the Four Horsemen to collapse wayward societies or implement immoral social policies? Do governments have the authority to make this decision? Do people have the rational self-interest needed to regulate their own urges? What about those that don't? Do we have the right to implement limits for "their own good?"
I fear any wellmeaning attempt that leads to a hellish dystopia, while at the same time I foresee a societal collapse on the horizon. Which is why this topic is bigger than any one person, me included.
Every environment has a carrying capacity, which is the hard limit that particular space can support life. This is not a dispute. Just as rats in a cage will breed to the limit of their space, food, and water, so too does any organism on the planet. For the large majority of Earth's history, species have been limited to their environments based on their physiology. That is, if a bird had a beak that could break the shell on a specific type of nut, then they could thrive by eating it. This is called adaptation.
Up until humans that is. We bent the rules. We have these brains that let us alter ourselves and our environments faster than evolution would normally allow. Instead of waiting a million years for someone to mutate with a claw that can crack a walnut, some smartypants came up with a nutcracker. Instead of scavenging the land for berries, somebody had the bright idea that if we planted all the berries in one place they could pick them a lot faster.
Humans have the evolutionary ability to increase our carrying capacity. It doesn't mean we don't have one, it just means that every good idea some brainiac comes up with increases this number.
The inverse is also true. Without the technologies that we currently possess, the carrying capacity of humans would plummet. Without nutcrackers and modern agriculture, billions of people would find themselves starving to death.
At this point, I want to take something from religion, without getting too dogmatic. This idea is the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I'd like to discuss the Famine, War, Pestilence, and Death version. (The older version, in my opinion, was before they had a group consciousness about disease.)
The Four Horsemen seem an awful lot like personified regulating factors. (Just as God and Devil look an awful lot like personified Good and Evil.) That is, whenever humans start overpopulating, people starve, fight wars, get sick, or just plain die in all of the usual random ways. This idea is not new.
There is also the mistaken idea that we can somehow push back these factors forever, and that one day the carrying capacity of humans will be infinite. This ignores a fundamental fact: our ability to adapt is not perfect. There is a certain amount of compromise involved. Every technology we put forth has detriments, as technologies like the internal combustion engine, intensive farming, and nuclear power have shown.
Now it would be easy to say at this point, "Well, let's all just stop overpopulating. Let's use contraception." However, a disturbing popular culture reference to this idea is the movie Idiocracy, in which "smart" people stop breeding, and are overrun by "stupid" people. Or take a government imposed restriction on population like China, where the one-child policy leads to many ethical dilemmas. Even something as gentle as a one point difference in fertility rate has a huge effect on social policy. Check out the U.S. and Mexico on this map. It's no wonder why immigration reform is such a huge fiasco.
The elephant in the room is the uncomfortable idea that any group that applies self-regulation to their breeding will be replaced by those that don't. Which is why I refrain from cheerleading a solution when all of the options are distasteful, some more than others. This is a choice between many evils: allow the Four Horsemen to collapse wayward societies or implement immoral social policies? Do governments have the authority to make this decision? Do people have the rational self-interest needed to regulate their own urges? What about those that don't? Do we have the right to implement limits for "their own good?"
I fear any wellmeaning attempt that leads to a hellish dystopia, while at the same time I foresee a societal collapse on the horizon. Which is why this topic is bigger than any one person, me included.
Friday, July 31
Music Video
Made my first music video this past week, and posted it on YouTube. Man, sharing art with people is absolutely the worst feeling in the world for me, and I empathize with hermits whenever I attempt something like this. It is difficult for me to be simultaneously sensitive and callous to the world, so that I can pick up on creative tremors in the ether, and then raise a protective shell to hide away from the demons lurking in the shadows.
Metaphorically speaking of course.
Metaphorically speaking of course.
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