babble home
rabble.ca - news for the rest of us
today's active topics

Topic Closed  Topic Closed


Post New Topic  
Topic Closed  Topic Closed
FAQ | Forum Home
  next oldest topic   next newest topic
» babble   » right brain babble   » humanities & science   » Have we lost more than we gained?

Email this thread to someone!    
Author Topic: Have we lost more than we gained?
Zatamon
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3912

posted 19 February 2006 02:37 PM      Profile for Zatamon        Edit/Delete Post
I am writing a book on science in general, Physics in particular. Among other things I wrote the following (please comment if you are interested in the topic).

"We live in precarious times. Science and scientists have lost the trust and respect of the citizenry, wondering if it was worth it after all? The question of “have we lost more than we gained?” is openly asked and many intelligent and honest people start being nostalgic about the vanished innocent and peaceful “Golden Age”.

I have friends who refuse to own a computer, threw out the TV and VCR from their homes that they built “off the grid”, heating with, and cooking on, wood stoves, just like their grandfathers used to.

I do understand their fear of technology, their mistrust of scientists and engineers. I am aware of the self-serving lies, the irresponsible rushing into applications and the smug conceit and condescension many of our scientists treat their fellow citizens with.

I am also aware of the uncountable advantages science gave us – advantages we take for granted and not hesitate for a second to use when in need. Carl Sagan was troubled by this contradiction when, in spite of being an animal-rights advocate, while terminally ill, he took advantage of medical techniques that could never have been developed without experimenting on animals.

The answer, as usual, seems to be sought in the backswing of the pendulum.

The answer, as usual, is wrong.

First of all, there never was a “Golden Age” we can escape back to. Jared Diamond’s magnificent book “The Third Chimpanzee” devotes a whole chapter to the topic of “The Golden Age that never was”.

Second, the culprit is not science and technology, but the way we as a social body collectively use it and allow it to be used. We are all responsible. There is so much greed, hypocrisy and complacency in all of us that unscrupulous parasites thrive in our midst.

Third: we can never put the genie back into its bottle. It is just simply not one of the options. We can’t go back, we can’t unlearn what we know, we can’t just forget our scientific heritage of millennia. Some would remember, some would tempt us with an irresistible bribe of living easier, healthier, longer and soon we would be back where we are now.

So what are we to do?

My advice: “hope for the best”! Hope that enough sanity prevails to see us through this technological adolescence without destroying ourselves and a good chunk of the Planet we live on. Maybe, at great cost to ourselves, we learn how to use the gift of the gods in a responsible way, to the benefit of all, without destroying the world.

If we do, the rewards could be breath-taking. If we did not spend most of our energies, brain-power and resources on making weapons of mass destruction and mindless distractions for both the rich and the poor, then we would have what it takes to usher in the age of a real paradise.

We could easily have abundant, cheap and clean energy for all if we focussed on fusion research. We have had practical nuclear fusion for 60 years in our hydrogen bombs. We can liberate the energy, we ‘only’ need to learn how to control it in a safe and sustainable way.

Once we had this energy source, so many things would automatically follow. We could stop using fossil fuels and thus eliminate the major cause of pollution and the savage imperialist wars now being waged in order to rob third world nations of their oil reserves.

We wouldn’t even have to abandon capitalism to solve the class hatred now tearing many nations apart. If no one was hungry, cold, living in fear and poverty, most people would be happy with their lot of comfort and security. Relatively very few people want to live in palaces and mansions and have their private jets to fly about.

Once we cleaned up our act here on Earth, then we could have a new look at the stars and see if we could find a way to visit them? Imagine the thrill you would feel if we could step off this “pale blue dot” and see what is out there?

No stupid ‘reality-show’ could equal the awe and wonder we would feel, if we could rise above and beyond our pitiful limitations, self imposed for millennia.

Since we can’t go back to a “Golden Age” that never was, our only choices seem to be: either self destruction, or a real utopia.

I vote for the second."

[ 19 February 2006: Message edited by: Zatamon ]


From: "The right crowd" | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594

posted 19 February 2006 05:07 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Have your friends taken up the lifestyles of their grandfathers out of fear of science and technology?. Or does it have something to do with having respect for the environment and the fact that independent scientists everywhere are saying we need to clean up our act ?.
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Zatamon
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3912

posted 19 February 2006 05:28 PM      Profile for Zatamon        Edit/Delete Post
Both.
From: "The right crowd" | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged
Rufus Polson
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3308

posted 19 February 2006 10:05 PM      Profile for Rufus Polson     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Zatamon:

We could easily have abundant, cheap and clean energy for all if we focussed on fusion research.

How do you know? I mean sure, we haven't "focussed" on fusion research, but a lot of billions of dollars have been spent on it and they've been saying we should have practical fusion power within thirty years since, oh, 1950 or so. They keep making plasma in tokamaks and a few more exotic shapes, they keep getting it hot, they keep failing to get it to do anything useful. Not that I think the research should be discontinued, but I don't see where there's big justification for saying a crash program would do much.

Most science fiction is full of fusion reactors providing near-unlimited power. Most science fiction also includes conventions like faster-than-light travel, and various other stuff that's included not so much because it's plausible as because the plot and setting you need for a lot of the kinds of stories people want to tell with SF require them. And great stories they are. Still, I keep thinking it would be cool to have an SF story set in, say, 2100 in which, by a rigorous extrapolation of past trends into the future, there is the occasional newspaper headline saying that with the latest test reactor being built for xxx billion $, physicists confidently expect practical fusion power within thirty years.

Speaking politically, I'm not a massive fan of fusion power just because it's too damned centralized. But if it happened, it would probably still be nice.


From: Caithnard College | Registered: Nov 2002  |  IP: Logged
Zatamon
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3912

posted 20 February 2006 07:18 AM      Profile for Zatamon        Edit/Delete Post
Rufus, you demonstrated the 'mistrust' part very well, but did not answer the question "Have we lost more than we gained?"
From: "The right crowd" | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged
Rufus Polson
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3308

posted 20 February 2006 03:08 PM      Profile for Rufus Polson     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Well, as to that--
"No."

Not those of us in the first world, anyhow. Everyone else I certainly can't speak for.

But around here--dentistry, plumbing, not being inhabited by parasites, plentiful books to read, computer games & the internet I'm typing on. Far as I'm concerned just the dentistry and plumbing and no-parasites stack up well against commuting and rat-race stress.


From: Caithnard College | Registered: Nov 2002  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 20 February 2006 03:54 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
While it is certainly correct that there was no golden age, there is no such thing as progress either. When you speak of of hunter-gatherer band society however it is obvious that on a spatial level, there was a level of egalitarian existance that was unparrelled compared to any other civilized time. With all the flaws of that past(canibalism, toruture ect) it still beats everthing we have done by a longshot. Richard B Lee and Marshal Sahlins have shown that enough.

As far as the question of technology goes, It is good to bring Mumford, Ellul, and Virilio into the picture. It is important to realize that certain techniques are inherently more complex then others and as such, the resulting relations are less egalitarian then they could be. The point in an egalitarian society should be to work with what Mumford calls democratic(sic, I use egalitarian instead) techniques which respond to a more direct immediate way of living.There are techniques throughout civilization which I think can conform to this in a post-civilized context. An important point to make is that a complex,instrumental technique is complex regardless of the social context, so those who think that some utopia can someday travel in space and continue the process of industrial technology should realize this.

I would say that a luddic base of technology is ultimately needed to conform to a relative,localized contextual existance that is freed from instrumentality.


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Mr. Magoo
guilty-pleasure
Babbler # 3469

posted 20 February 2006 04:16 PM      Profile for Mr. Magoo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
When you speak of of hunter-gatherer band society however it is obvious that on a spatial level, there was a level of egalitarian existance that was unparrelled compared to any other civilized time. With all the flaws of that past(canibalism, toruture ect) it still beats everthing we have done by a longshot.

Ah, the romanticized existence of the noble savage.

What a pile of rot. Typed out on a computer without a shred of irony, no less.


From: ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø, | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 20 February 2006 04:21 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
Magoo have you ever even read Sahlins or Lee? They certainly don't romanticise these societies, however on balance the level of affluence and freedom of movement observed by them and other post-positivist anthropologists is clear to see.

There is a lot that these societies can teach us in regards to egalitarianism. This does not mean "going back" so to speak.


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Mr. Magoo
guilty-pleasure
Babbler # 3469

posted 20 February 2006 04:31 PM      Profile for Mr. Magoo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Fair enough. But will it reasonably apply to the society we have now?

People often point out how societies of the past had, eg., little or no crime. They fail to note that these societies were nearly homogenous. No different religions, no different cultures, etc.

Great when you're one of 60 nomadic herders. Less so when you're one of 30,000,000 Canadians.


From: ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø, | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 20 February 2006 04:44 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
Well magoo, as you might know, I consider myself an enemy of mass society to begin with. When it comes to any revolutionary tactics I do not concern myself with 30 million people. I primarily concern myself with what is good for me, and who I find affinity with.

To destroy this system of domination, there will have to be a mass event, but I do not think of a mass movement in the traditional sense. I think in terms of immenant multiplicity(world of many words)
The anti-globalization movement actually was a good example of this, it was a mass event but it was based on affinities. The very means of that movement were a good example of the ends that we could reach(a world of many worlds).

Essentially I would like a return to a localized context in a similar veign to what the band/tribe model was. Though the difference would be that there are socities outside of the particular affinity that someone finds comfort with. One of the things that may have been the undoing of primitive society is the fact that the groupd of the day did not think outside the box enoungh. Essentially it was nationalism of the smallest scale.


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594

posted 20 February 2006 05:36 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Do you honestly believe we can't see through your lunatic right-wing libertarian fringe crapola, V ?.
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Zatamon
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3912

posted 20 February 2006 06:39 PM      Profile for Zatamon        Edit/Delete Post
When I asked the question: “Have we lost more than we gained?” I was thinking of all the arguments my luddite friends have been using to convince me about the “evil of technology”. Some of these arguments sound convincing to a degree. A few of them are the following:

- Humanity did not face extinction before nuclear weapons were invented. Now it does.
- Same for the environmental and climate changes.
- Mass-produced food and other necessities resulted in a population explosion now overwhelming the Planet's resources and the tolerance of its ecology.
- Tecnology-driven industrial mass-production turned most indepemdent farmers and home-based tradesmen into wage-slaves.
- Hunter-gatherer people spent about 16 hours a week to secure their food supply.
- TV and mass media killed critical and original thinking in the citizenry (enforced conformity).
- The need for skilled workers turned human education into trade schools (almost no history, geography, hardly any art, philosophy and literature).
- The extended family and its support role almost disappeared.
- Average lifespan is longer, quality of life is lower (mass depression, neurosis, drug abuse, alienation, etc).

My answer to them is twofold: on the individual level I advise as small a footprint as one can manage (see "Alternative lifestyle" thread ). On the large-scale, species-survival level, I hope that the human species will survive the coming collapse (inevitable consequence of the present course)and this collapse will teach the survivors to do it right next time.

In the "Ethics of Science" chapter of my book I write: "The ethics of science that should be taught to science students all over the world should be the same as the Hippocratic Oath taught to medical students: “First, do no harm!”. Say no to weapons research, say no to projects that could harm the environment, that would cause pain and suffering to life on this planet."

I don't expect this advice to make any difference. However, I am trying to convince some readers that the fault is not with science and technology. Pure science is beautiful, fascinating, invigorating, the pinnacle of what a human mind is capable of. It is intelligent, it is clean. It is not science we should escape from: it is our greed, hypocrisy, complacency, envy, intolerance and other very human emotions that we need to work on.

And now I get off my soapbox.

[ 20 February 2006: Message edited by: Zatamon ]


From: "The right crowd" | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 20 February 2006 07:28 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
Some of the things you mentioned could indeed be practical in a post-civilized context. However if you think this can be a part of a differently maintaned industrial society you are quite mistaken.

I think the use of the words science&technology should be clarified. I have no problem with these things as long as they conform to life and are not used as an instrument separate from our desires.

Essentially they should conform to local relativity and not Newtonian based absolutes.


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594

posted 20 February 2006 08:31 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Yes, techno-how should never fall in the hands of SPECTRE, V. Because there's a commie basstid hiding around every tree trunk waiting to tether you to a spy satellite when you're not looking. Did you know they can't read your thoughts if your touque is made of tinfoil ?.

healthy victory!


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Zatamon
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3912

posted 21 February 2006 09:18 AM      Profile for Zatamon        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Vigilante:
Some of the things you mentioned could indeed be practical in a post-civilized context....if you think this can be a part of a differently maintaned industrial society you are quite mistaken.
Query: What are those "Some"? What is "post-civilized"? What is "this"? What is a "differently maintained industrial society"?

[ 21 February 2006: Message edited by: Zatamon ]


From: "The right crowd" | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 21 February 2006 01:56 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
Well Zatamon the "some" could be those products which are not nessarily complex and dependant on a division of labour based production system. "Post-civilization" means the destruction of mass society and a return to a localized subsistance based context. And by "diffenently maintained", I mean that industrialism or any production system to begin with where there is an artificial division between work and life is inherently alienating. Bob Black makes the point that work should be replaced with play, something I certainly agree with.
From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Mr. Magoo
guilty-pleasure
Babbler # 3469

posted 21 February 2006 02:02 PM      Profile for Mr. Magoo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
So in our return to a simpler, less complex way of life, what do we do with all the extra people??

That always seems to me the biggest stumbling block to "social downsizing"... what to when you crave a world that could sustain maybe a billion, in a world with 5 billion more than that.


From: ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø, | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
Zatamon
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3912

posted 21 February 2006 02:28 PM      Profile for Zatamon        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Vigilante:
"Post-civilization" means the destruction of mass society and a return to a localized subsistance based context.
Thanks for the clarification, Vigilante, although I still don't quite see what it is that I am "quite mistaken" about (you did not clarify what you meant by the word "this" in the context of what I quoted).

Rereading your posts, it seems you are hoping for a massive decentralization, maybe in the model of ancient Greek city-states? Or all the way back to hunting-gathering? The idea of decentralization, of course, is not new, just think of Joe Clark’s “community of communities” for example.

I agree with you that complex technology almost inevitably results in a social class system, unless money is removed from the equation and the communist principle of “work according to ability and consume according to need” is firmly established. This, however, presupposes a culturally homogeneous society with very strong taboos against private ownership of the means of production. The so called “communist experiments” in Russia, Eastern Europe, etc. are irrelevant here, because the above quoted principle was never ever tried in practice.

In my essay I did not hold out any hope for a workable solution in the foreseeable future. I am quite certain that the collapse will happen in our lifetimes (probably very soon) and then it is up to the survivors (if any) to figure it out and try something sane and sustainable for a change. Of course, our species may be inherently unviable, in which case nothing will work.

The only purpose I had with my post was to point out that it is not science and technology that we should blame (as many do these days) but rather it is our misusing our knowledge of science and technology in a suicidal way. I also wanted to point out that there is a collective responsibility for it: for the doers to be doing it; for the victims to be permitting it (through inertia, complacency, ignorance, wanting it both ways, etc., etc.).

Since the book I am writing is about science, I thought it was an important point to address and I was also curious if anyone on Babble would be interested in such a topic.


From: "The right crowd" | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 21 February 2006 02:28 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
You raise an interesting point magoo. The flipside to your point of view is that you wish to continue the very instrumentality that gave us 6.5 going on 7 billion people to begin with. Certainly this is a precarious situation that people within the anti-civilization mileu have awknowleged. At the very worst I compare a return to local subsistance with a heroin addict detoxing him/herself. Certainly painfull in either scenerio, however we all know what staying on heroin as an addict will do to you, and the logic of rational instrumentality is not one where you can be a weekend warrior. If you look at what peek oil combined with ecological collapse means then we are pretty close to catching the dragon.

Beside the point, I am hopefull that a permacultural system could sustain even the multi-billions that we have now. Beyond that I feel there probably will be a collapse of some kind as people like James Kunstler have shown. The answer to our problems are not easy, but probably the most nessesary.


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Mr. Magoo
guilty-pleasure
Babbler # 3469

posted 21 February 2006 02:34 PM      Profile for Mr. Magoo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
The flipside to your point of view is that you wish to continue the very instrumentality that gave us 6.5 going on 7 billion people to begin with.

So far it seems more humane than drawing straws.

May I suggest a meritocracy, where smart people like us are allowed to live, and it's the schlubs and lumps who get culled?


From: ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø, | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
cogito ergo sum
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 10610

posted 21 February 2006 02:57 PM      Profile for cogito ergo sum     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:

May I suggest a meritocracy, where smart people like us are allowed to live, and it's the schlubs and lumps who get culled?


I'd be even happier with a system where I get to decide who gets culled or not.

From: not behind you, honest! | Registered: Oct 2005  |  IP: Logged
HeywoodFloyd
token right-wing mascot
Babbler # 4226

posted 21 February 2006 02:59 PM      Profile for HeywoodFloyd     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Hey. My boys won the election. I get to pick the babblers.
From: Edmonton: This place sucks | Registered: Jun 2003  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 21 February 2006 04:22 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Zatamon:
Rereading your posts, it seems you are hoping for a massive decentralization, maybe in the model of ancient Greek city-states? Or all the way back to hunting-gathering? The idea of decentralization, of course, is not new, just think of Joe Clark’s “community of communities” for example.

Well some groups will be bigger then others, however the city state idea is not one I care for. Hunter-gathering can certainly be a productive option if the conditions are right. As my point above shows, I see permaculture being the main base of food in a post-civilized society, if hunting and gathering can be thrown in there all the better. And as far had Clarks comments goes, it was framed in a statist multicultural context, not something I care for, seeing that it is just nationalism dispersed with the state legitimized.

quote:
I agree with you that complex technology almost inevitably results in a social class system, unless money is removed from the equation and the communist principle of “work according to ability and consume according to need” is firmly established. This, however, presupposes a culturally homogeneous society with very strong taboos against private ownership of the means of production. The so called “communist experiments” in Russia, Eastern Europe, etc. are irrelevant here, because the above quoted principle was never ever tried in practice.

Actually even without money this does not change. Whether we think in terms of commodification or socially usefull labour, the alienating results of industrial technology remain the same. When a given society thrusts itself into this they will inevitably run into issues of effinciancy, and as efficiancy beckons, life becomes more complex, money could indeed come back through this alone.
And eastern Europe was well on its way to become a subsistance based communal landscape if not for red fascists like Lenin who "wanted to make russia iron from wood"

quote:
In my essay I did not hold out any hope for a workable solution in the foreseeable future. I am quite certain that the collapse will happen in our lifetimes (probably very soon) and then it is up to the survivors (if any) to figure it out and try something sane and sustainable for a change. Of course, our species may be inherently unviable, in which case nothing will work.

Well some of the ideas were good(particularly in regards to the DIY element) However I would say would best correspond to a local luddic relativist moving context.

quote:
The only purpose I had with my post was to point out that it is not science and technology that we should blame (as many do these days) but rather it is our misusing our knowledge of science and technology in a suicidal way. I also wanted to point out that there is a collective responsibility for it: for the doers to be doing it; for the victims to be permitting it (through inertia, complacency, ignorance, wanting it both ways, etc., etc.).

Well science and technology tend to be poorly defined terms. It is not just compartmentalization in factories or specialists in labs. I tend to distinguish between einsteinian science and newtonian. The relativistic logic of the former is good for an egalitarian agency, the latter is overly narrow(though not overly wrong) and absolutist which tends to correspond well to a capitalist agency. As I said science and technology should conform to our lives and desires in an immediate spontanious, non-specialized manner.

Now in addressing the comments below, I will simply out the obvious, that is we are choosing which portion of the world will be culled. I simply point you to places like Niger and Malawi at this very moment. I would tell magoo that I am certainly very smart and very much greedy for life, however this is impeeded by this spooky mass society and the psychological attachments people like magoo have with it. And what is going on down there will eventually catch up to us, so again I say, get off the fucking heroin.


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Zatamon
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3912

posted 21 February 2006 05:19 PM      Profile for Zatamon        Edit/Delete Post
A few comments and questions:

Vigilante, I would like you to answer a few simple questions:
- What are the different possible options for humanity’s future?
- What is the end result you would like to see?
- How probable is it that this end result will happen?
- Do you see a roadmap leading to it?
- What other options have same or higher probability?

Once you answer these questions in a logical, consistent and fact-based manner, then you can be reasonably sure that you are standing on solid grounds.

My answers to the same questions are the following:

- The different options I see, in decreasing order of probability are: partial or total self-destruction; global government (dictatorial); anarchy of tribal/cultural groups; global government (real democracy).
- I would like to see a global civilization practicing meaningful democracy (one species on one planet) using science and technology (no problem with specialization) in a non-destructive way both for humans and the ecology
- This outcome is the least likely of all the options I am aware of.
- It might exist for a while in small pockets here and there but I don’t see it happening on a global scale without a lot more biological evolution (and that takes time).

In the meantime, as I said before, there is no going back to a pre-industrial golden age, because there were none. The only thing we can do is go forward, try to use science and technology well to clean up our mess and hope that it is not too late to turn things around. Jared Diamond is “cautiously optimistic” in his newest book: “Collapse”, but his reasons seem to boil down to: “I have two sons, I have to be cautiously optimistic”.


From: "The right crowd" | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594

posted 21 February 2006 05:32 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Vigilante:

Now in addressing the comments below, I will simply out the obvious, that is we are choosing which portion of the world will be culled. I simply point you to places like Niger and Malawi at this very moment. I would tell magoo that I am certainly very smart and very much greedy for life, however this is impeeded by this spooky mass society and the psychological attachments people like magoo have with it. And what is going on down there will eventually catch up to us, so again I say, get off the fucking heroin.

You're extremely lucky you're even allowed to post here, is all I can say. "Culling people" and the post-order, fcs. Who are you, Dr frickin Strangelove ?.

Your mixed-up political ecology is already happening, V. Socialists have beat you to it. And the new movement is full of political reds and greens who are already planning green and democratic socialist economies of the future. And the new model, based on ALL human characteristics, will be a more accurate model than Marx or Smith envisioned and producing results that contribute toward the LARGEST context and societal goals as agreed to by everyone. Sorry, you'll have to tell all your right-wing libertarian lawyer friends who want to use and abuse society but not pay any taxes that they'll actually have to work for a living in the future or be voted off the island.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Mr. Magoo
guilty-pleasure
Babbler # 3469

posted 21 February 2006 05:39 PM      Profile for Mr. Magoo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
And what is going on down there will eventually catch up to us, so again I say, get off the fucking heroin.

Hehe.

It's a really simple question: you're proposing an existance which could never support everyone living on the planet right now. So if you were to get your Christmas wish, and we were all to move to some kind of affinity-based, decentralized hunter-gatherer-type society, masses of people would have to die.

Which people? The weak ones? The intelligentsia? Everyone who wears glasses? Surely you understand that this isn't one of those problems that will "just take care of itself when the time comes".


From: ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø, | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 21 February 2006 06:26 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
1st to answer zalkos questions

-If you look at the thread earth 2050 the website that is linked has some scenerios ie adapting mosiac(my thing)order of stength, ect. My guess is the future will be a shmorgusboard of the different events througout history, some slavery and fuedalism here, bit of capitalism here, my kinda organization in certain pockets as you said. At the very least I am willing to accept the pockets. What ever stab at anarchy there is I will take. Obviously my prefered goal is a change of agency worldwide.

-The end is as Magoo sort of said(though he is wrong about me wanting hunter-gathering as the main mode of sustinence)

-At the moment not very probable. But who knows, humans are spontanious, unique subjects. When the anti-globalization movement(very affinity based means) was at its peak, people like me had some high hopes that the revolutionary discourse might evolve toward an anti/post-civilization agency.
Things are always in flux.

-Well the road map if anywould come from something like a worldwide anti-globalization style revolution. Hopefully after capital, state, and industry is destroyed, we all have the post-molecular revolution orgy and go our separate ways back to who we find affinity with. But we return not balkanized like last time, but with a knowlege that there is a dynamic of immanent multiplicity that exists outside our affinities and ourselves as unique beings.

-Options with higher probability, an duh no, James Kustler mentions some bad things that are more likely to happen. Whatever happens there will be a huge material change at some point which will kill off the global society that you seem to fetishize.
There is going to be somekind of decentering on a material level. Whether it goes as far as I want it to go is an open question. At the very least there will be pockets as you said. And ultimately I will take what is best for me. And your view that change takes time is as far as I'm concerned a reflection of liberal ideology. We are for more existential then you realize and can change are agency for better or worse on a moments notice.

Now as for your last statement about "not going back" this is predicated on the idea that we moved forward. This is newtonian thinking at its worst. From a more Einsteinian perspective, our existance is always relative. The move from hunter-gathering to food production was a change in existance, not a movement forward. What I desire is a simple change in existance. Progression and regression are ideological spooks.

Now to the cartoon character

quote:
It's a really simple question: you're proposing an existance which could never support everyone living on the planet right now. So if you were to get your Christmas wish, and we were all to move to some kind of affinity-based, decentralized hunter-gatherer-type society, masses of people would have to die.

1st of all as I said above you are right for all I want for christmas accept the hunter-gathering(something which as I said is not possible on a big level at the moment). As I said, if you can swing it in certain geographic areas without alot of conflict through high numbers then go ahead(its damn productive). As I have continually said, some type of food production will be needed to serve the billions that might be hypothetically living on this planet. As for whether a localized permacultural existance could accomodate 6.5 or more people in practace is not ultimately known for the obvious reason that there has never been a large scale return to local subsistance. From that your charge that there will be a die off remains hypothetical.

Now in the chance that there will be a die-off(and I certainly don't think this is a given) You have to face this off against the fact that we are heading for a die-off right now. The worst case scenario unfortunately becomes which is worse.

And I would hope that the revolution that I am a part of would not be discriminating in the way you imply at the bottom

[ 21 February 2006: Message edited by: Vigilante ]


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Mr. Magoo
guilty-pleasure
Babbler # 3469

posted 21 February 2006 06:33 PM      Profile for Mr. Magoo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Whatever happens there will be a huge material change at some point which will kill off the global society that you seem to fetishize.

Well as I see it it's a choice between the life we have now, which you seem to despise, and the options you propose, which I cannot help but think would require a very drastic reduction in the world's population in order to be viable.

So in other words, we have status quo, or we watch as about 80% of the population has to starve or somehow die in order to allow the remainder to live in this post-technological utopia.

If not wanting to see 4 out of 5 of my friends die = a fetish, then sign me up.

Oh, and if you intend to assume and assert that anyone who isn't yearning to live in a Yurt somewhere with 6 of their closest "affinity" friends has some irrational attachment to the life that we currently call normal then I'm going to have to merely begin mocking you, and cruelly too.


From: ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø, | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 21 February 2006 06:43 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
Well magsy, living in the privilaged position you so enjoy, it is easy to hug the status quo like you do. There are many people in Africa and other parts of the 3rd who would say fuck you.
From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 21 February 2006 06:55 PM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Well magsy, living in the privilaged position you so enjoy, it is easy to hug the status quo like you do. There are many people in Africa and other parts of the 3rd who would say fuck you.
It's quite the opposite, actually. I don't often agree with Magoo but it seems that MOST of the Third World rightly or wrongly aspires to live the way Magoo lives, not the way that you WANT to live, and they'd be happy telling you to go jump in a lake.
quote:
An important point to make is that a complex,instrumental technique is complex regardless of the social context, so those who think that some utopia can someday travel in space and continue the process of industrial technology should realize this.

If this massively reductive belief really does hold, then there are some of us who don't care to live in your utopia. Or wouldn't by choice. And your utopia would always be corrupted by us.

From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Mr. Magoo
guilty-pleasure
Babbler # 3469

posted 21 February 2006 06:56 PM      Profile for Mr. Magoo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Sure. And here in Toronto too. Do you have a point, other than the one on top of your head?

And again, if not having to kill off 80% of the world in order to follow my dream of living in some kind of "affinity group" means "hugging the status quo" then all I can say is "Status Quo, feel the love!"

Now... do you have any ideas that aren't retarded? Would you like to consult with your affinity group and get back to us?


From: ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø, | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
anne cameron
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8045

posted 21 February 2006 07:05 PM      Profile for anne cameron     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I'm with Magoo. I'm at the point where, when people start blethering about this back-to-basics non-techno paradise the venetian blinds begin to shut and I want to climb into bed and snooze until the hot air stops.

But I've got a suggestion..for all those billions of "supernumerary population"..Magoo is, I understand, an excellent cook..and I'm told human flesh tastes like pork...Those who survive the cull will simply munch up those who don't survive the cull...

Oh, stop it! It isn't any sillier an idea than the ones about agrarian wonderfulness. How many of the ones sitting sipping latte and talk talk talking have ever actually tried to produce their own food? Get rid of those visions of people in Birkenstocks sauntering past vines burdened with lucious grapes , or reachng up to pick a ripe peach from a ladened tree and think, instead, of heavy work boots, jeans, tee shirt and gloves, all patched, worn, and dirty as hell, and you out there windburned, back aching, hands blistered, working harder than you've ever worked in your life. day after day after day... I had a farm and yes, I enjoyed it, I regretted having to sell it and retire but I know the reason I was forced to do that was too much unrelenting hard physical labour and a back which just could not do it any more.

Oh, it all SOUNDS so nice. The reality will break your heart, your spirit and your health. Why do you think the average life expectancy during this purported Golden Age was something around thirty to thirtyfive years?

They were worked to death. Their teeth rotted out of their heads. Their children died shortly after birth.

Jesus, get a grip! Magoo, you've been very very kind and gentle, but in case some twit tries to put this idea into action, look up those recipe's, will you? "Neighbour Flambe", perhaps or a nice Quenelle of Cull Moussee?


From: tahsis, british columbia | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 21 February 2006 07:12 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
Mandos is correct that a number of africans want what we want. The only problem is that this system of mass industrialism is built on inequality to begin with. And there are many subsistance,consensus based societes in africa who see things my way.

I hope the day comes when mandos is an old man complaining to the freeones how the world was so much better when we wasted our time building spaceships. A laugh on the level the San bursts out.

Magoo continues his abstraction of 80% dying, this as I said remains hypothetical. He does not even bother looking at where this society is heading. I simply refer him to the phenomenas of peak oil and ecological collapse, I guarentee you collapse is developing in both of them. I come from Bardados for instance, a consuming country with no oil and no sustainable agriculture. It will be places like these where the term 'evironmental refugee' will become a reality. I have freinds in this country so it makes me sad to think this. If you study these 2 material phenomenas you will find that collapse is far more probable in that then a return to local subsistance.

I will counter your ableist charge and say that you are the one with the tunnel vision. You'd do well to play an easter islander who tells those warning about too much trees being cut down that their views are(insert easter island word for retarded)


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 21 February 2006 07:30 PM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Mandos is correct that a number of africans want what we want. The only problem is that this system of mass industrialism is built on inequality to begin with. And there are many subsistance,consensus based societes in africa who see things my way.

I hope the day comes when mandos is an old man complaining to the freeones how the world was so much better when we wasted our time building spaceships. A laugh on the level the San bursts out.


Oh, I can imagine all kinds of reasons why humanity might conclude that building spaceships would be a waste of time. The tragic limits of physics for instance. It's possible that we've done all that we can for now.

At the same time, it would be a tragedy, not a liberation. Because this "localization" worldview is profoundly pessimistic---masked by a forced, almost viciously grim optimism that you display very well here. An optimism that Prometheus will finally get his comeuppance.

Only someone who has never felt biology impinge on his life and his choices could ever feel that way. Forget space---I'm happy for whatever form of society can open my young close relative up and remove his ruptured appendix and clean up his befouled viscera without also killing him in the process. Because, you see, without this industrial society---without the computerized scans, without the carefully computed doses of drugs, without the instrumentation---he would have died. Yes, it was that bad.

And don't you go telling me that his appendix was a result of our industrial society. Bacteria have always existed and given the opportunity some of them would kill us. They have always killed other organisms! I take a look at the fossil of the trilobite at the ROM---it has a big bite out of it. That's your nature and that's your local environment!

quote:
Magoo continues his abstraction of 80% dying, this as I said remains hypothetical. He does not even bother looking at where this society is heading. I simply refer him to the phenomenas of peak oil and ecological collapse, I guarentee you collapse is developing in both of them. I come from Bardados for instance, a consuming country with no oil and no sustainable agriculture. It will be places like these where the term 'evironmental refugee' will become a reality. I have freinds in this country so it makes me sad to think this. If you study these 2 material phenomenas you will find that collapse is far more probable in that then a return to local subsistance.

Oh, this may very well be so. Or it may not. I'm on the fence about collapse. I have nothing against conservation for the sake of survival---but it is a defensive act, not a positive one, and it can in no way be mistaken for liberation.


From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 21 February 2006 07:32 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
Well Anne, if you subsist on traditional agriculture then it will be toily. However as I said there are better forms of subsistance(permaculture for eg)

And besides the fact that we are alienated in other ways througout industrial society, you're forgetting that someone is mining for those things that supposedely make life easier. And there are certainly mexican and other latin american workers who are picking those fruits and vegetables for you making those recipies possible.


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Zatamon
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3912

posted 21 February 2006 07:36 PM      Profile for Zatamon        Edit/Delete Post
Causes have consequences. When the cause happens, nobody will ask us if we want the consequences -- they will happen automatically. That is the nature of the beast.

With science and technology we gained a lot and we also lost a lot (see my list in an earlier post). The question is: can we survive the consequences of the balance sheet?

If yes, what is our best strategy? Try to abandon the industrial path and go back to less effluent but less destructive ways of life, or try to use the very same tools that created this mess (science and technology) to clean things up?

Can we do that? Is there enough time? Is there enough willpower and foresight to sacrifice short-term gains for long-term survival?

Many questions I have not received too many answers for (yet).


From: "The right crowd" | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 21 February 2006 07:51 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Mandos:
Oh, I can imagine all kinds of reasons why humanity might conclude that building spaceships would be a waste of time. The tragic limits of physics for instance. It's possible that we've done all that we can for now.

At the same time, it would be a tragedy, not a liberation. Because this "localization" worldview is profoundly pessimistic---masked by a forced, almost viciously grim optimism that you display very well here. An optimism that Prometheus will finally get his comeuppance.


The view expressed here is based once again on the assumption that our consciousness operates on a linear based level. I have no inherent hate of these technologies as I have said before, that being said, I desire as unmediated a life as possible, and the logic of industrial society(for all I might find interesting about it)gets in the way. And there is no changing this.

quote:
Only someone who has never felt biology impinge on his life and his choices could ever feel that way. Forget space---I'm happy for whatever form of society can open my young close relative up and remove his ruptured appendix and clean up his befouled viscera without also killing him in the process. Because, you see, without this industrial society---without the computerized scans, without the carefully computed doses of drugs, without the instrumentation---he would have died. Yes, it was that bad.

Puh-lease, most of the deseases that we have our the result of the agricultural, mass society that we have embarked on. There are many people with asthma who have died before there time, or people with cromes disease and many others I can name, Have you heard the stuff that's mothers milk nowadays, you fetishized industrialism thanks you.
The drugs that we take our a reaction not a cure to the deep seated problem of techno-industrial/agricultural society. Certainly bacteria existed, but nonhuman animal husbadry multiplied it big time buddy.

There are certainly alternative,primitive even modern forms of health care that we know about in civilized hignsight that could work in a more luddic context. However, fighting the diseases that mass society gave us with modern techniques is tautological process which hardly gets to the root of the problem.


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 21 February 2006 07:55 PM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
The drugs that we take our a reaction not a cure to the deep seated problem of techno-industrial/agricultural society. Certainly bacteria existed, but nonhuman animal husbadry multiplied it big time buddy.

Sorry, I don't buy it. There's comparatively little evidence but wishful thinking to imagine that our lives weren't much better than nasty, brutish, and short. I have seen claims of otherwise but had little reason to believe them, except for very isolated pockets where there was something environmentally exceptional, maybe.

I can believe that agriculture had some negative effects. For instance, shortening life expectancy at its inception from, oh, 30 years to 25.

[ 21 February 2006: Message edited by: Mandos ]


From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 21 February 2006 07:58 PM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
The view expressed here is based once again on the assumption that our consciousness operates on a linear based level. I have no inherent hate of these technologies as I have said before, that being said, I desire as unmediated a life as possible, and the logic of industrial society(for all I might find interesting about it)gets in the way. And there is no changing this.

Your belief in "mediated vs. unmediated" life is a false metaphysical dichotomy. Your life and your experience of it is always mediated in some way, in equal and absolute measure. No matter how you live. The only difference is the terms of the mediation. You seem to prefer to be mediated by some metaphysical construct you've created that's called "nature", which is a delusion.


From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 21 February 2006 08:14 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
Haaaaaaaaaa haah ha hah ha Ha, he used the nasty brutish and short mantra, weeee.

Go read guns germs and steel dude. The new anthropologists have destroyed that mantra, as well as pointed out that hunter-gatherers lived alot longer then we realized(it was not untill industrialism came along that we started to outlive them(sanitation something that can exist without industrialism btw)And it was not a 5 year difference either.

And if you want to get semantical, yes mediation exists to a point. However like all struture there are qualative differences. My way is not stucture and mediation for the sake of it through such abstractions as time for instance. Work should be play as far as I'm concerned. I like the idea of 8+ hours of leasure time comming back thanks


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Boarsbreath
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 9831

posted 21 February 2006 08:27 PM      Profile for Boarsbreath   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
There wouldn't be Guns, Germs, and Steels to read in anything like your utopia, Vig. If you like discussions, or arguments, or just reflections, like this one right here, then you like societies like this.

Early farmers lived worse than hunter/gatherers, sure. But farmers in technologically unadvanced societies live a whole lot worse than we do...and most importantly, we can talk about this; they can't. The very act of this discussion is an endorsement of the civilisation that makes it possible.


From: South Seas, ex Montreal | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 21 February 2006 08:41 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
The very act of using money is an endorsement of capitalism. Please, contribute something better to the discussion.

Yes I am using this technology as a way to undermine it, so what? Ever heard of hegelian dialectics? All epochs have their own destruction deep within them.
You could say that I'm using industrial technology in a redemptive fasion(ode to Walter Benjamin). This means using it in an alterior or opposite way to what it was originally intended for.


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Tommy_Paine
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 214

posted 21 February 2006 09:00 PM      Profile for Tommy_Paine     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
"Sorry, I don't buy it. There's comparatively little evidence but wishful thinking to imagine that our lives weren't much better than nasty, brutish, and short. "


Mandos is right, and it puts me in mind of James Burke's series "Connections" when he talked about the ideal pastoral England (Tolkien's Shire) that only existed for a handfull, and whose existance required child labour and pittifully low wages for adults.

Nasty, brutish and short for the most of us.


To the question posed, I think we have gained more than lost, to be sure. Could and should our gains be better? No doubt in my mind.

The biggest problem in North America is our education system. For decades now we graduate students from high school, that at best, have been exposed to scientific factiods, but have no grasp of science as a thinking tool.

This is where the public is "scientifically illiterate", and this has lead to problem number two.

Which is science increasingly being practiced behind closed doors without public input or scrutiny. This is where I agree with the "luddites". If science is going to be monopolized by Mansanto or Dupont, then we are lost.

It's as if the greatest gift of our ancestors is being stolen from us.

Science needs to be public, it needs to be democratized. That can't happen without a scientifically litterate society.


From: The Alley, Behind Montgomery's Tavern | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594

posted 21 February 2006 09:06 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Vigilante:
There are certainly alternative,primitive even modern forms of health care that we know about in civilized hignsight that could work in a more luddic context. However, fighting the diseases that mass society gave us with modern techniques is tautological process which hardly gets to the root of the problem.

This is exactly why I know you don't have a clue as to what has been at the root cause of Marxist and communist rebellions the world over during the last century. For several hundred million in the 3rd world, the "root of the problem" has been a total lack of health care of any kind - clean drinking water and land to actually support subsistence. You fail to comprehend the situation altogether and that socialism is the closest thing to providing just these basic necessities of life for them. All of your bullshit non-arguments completely ignore the issue of how they get from point A to B. Instead, you've ranted on about "red fascism" and never once addressed what in hell is preventing these billions of people from accessing so much as a measles vaccination.

It seems in order to get to your fantasy permaculture world, which to me, too closely resembles a right-wing Libertarian nightmare imo, the world has to endure some Strangelove post-apocalyptic tragedy first. It's a clever way of avoiding what the left has been all about in the meantime, and that's an entirely sane way to arrive at point B. Your libertarian permaculture scenario isn't doable in the here and now because real, bloody ultra right-wing fascism has a few percent of human beings claiming ownership of half of humanity. You tend to leave out the part where a few million super-wealthy bankers, politicians, industrialists and right-wing whackos all move to their own private island and continue on with what they do best and leaving you to live in peace with nature. The pursuit of democratic socialism is that grey cloud inbetween your fantasy permaculture world and the way it is now, V.

[ 21 February 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 21 February 2006 09:33 PM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Haaaaaaaaaa haah ha hah ha Ha, he used the nasty brutish and short mantra, weeee.

I was aware you'd react this way. That's why I used it *needle*

quote:
Go read guns germs and steel dude. The new anthropologists have destroyed that mantra, as well as pointed out that hunter-gatherers lived alot longer then we realized(it was not untill industrialism came along that we started to outlive them(sanitation something that can exist without industrialism btw)And it was not a 5 year difference either.

Oh, sorry. 7 or 8 years. In one of his articles available online JD refers to 25 year life expectancies vs 19 or something. I've seen claims that in the tropics one might live to over 31 or something! It's imagined in some quarters that population growth (== lack of effective and widely-used contraception) may have anyway forced the use of high-yield food production techniques, ie, agriculture. Ironically.

Critiques of "progressivism" suffer from an unfortunate weakness: what is the scale on which you are measuring progress? I mean, most immediately, time scale. It isn't linear---but it isn't circular either. As far as I can tell, it's epicyclic with an upward trend. You're right that life expectancy has been low for much of agricultural history, but to reach our current levels we had to eventually achieve industrialization.

Whether industrialization is sustainable is another matter. Like I said, I'm on the fence. It's pretty clear to me that this form of industrialization is going the way of the dodo. I know people working on the preliminary ideas of newer forms. Forms that *gasp* might even be more "local", in a sense, like nanomolecular manufacturing.

quote:
And if you want to get semantical, yes mediation exists to a point. However like all struture there are qualative differences. My way is not stucture and mediation for the sake of it through such abstractions as time for instance.

I invite you to seriously treat the reality of time as an abstraction while you age.

It's not a semantic point. You are attempting to define a "better mediation" and "worse mediation". I'm saying that your choices are simply based on an incorrect metaphysics.

quote:
Work should be play as far as I'm concerned. I like the idea of 8+ hours of leasure time comming back thanks

You know, the people I know who most enjoy their work are all programmers...

I'd like to go back to this quote:

quote:
The view expressed here is based once again on the assumption that our consciousness operates on a linear based level. I have no inherent hate of these technologies as I have said before, that being said, I desire as unmediated a life as possible, and the logic of industrial society(for all I might find interesting about it)gets in the way. And there is no changing this.

The """unmediated""" life you want to lead is thus at the expense of others. And hence, thankfully, it's unlikely that you will ever live it. Yes, this "unmediation" is very much based on a resentment of Prometheus.

[ 21 February 2006: Message edited by: Mandos ]


From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594

posted 21 February 2006 09:36 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
We have to read Steel, Guns and Germans, Mandos. We're just wallowing in our own ignorance otherwise.

mein Fuhrer, I can walk!


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Zatamon
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3912

posted 21 February 2006 10:20 PM      Profile for Zatamon        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
To the question posed, I think we have gained more than lost, to be sure.
Short term: yes. However, if those nukes on hair-trigger alert start flying: no. Or the superstorm, or the superbugs, or...you get the picture.
quote:
Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
The biggest problem in North America is our education system. For decades now we graduate students from high school, that at best, have been exposed to scientific factiods, but have no grasp of science as a thinking tool.

This is where the public is "scientifically illiterate", and this has lead to problem number two.

Which is science increasingly being practiced behind closed doors without public input or scrutiny. This is where I agree with the "luddites". If science is going to be monopolized by Mansanto or Dupont, then we are lost.

It's as if the greatest gift of our ancestors is being stolen from us.

Science needs to be public, it needs to be democratized. That can't happen without a scientifically litterate society.


I couldn't have said it better myself...so what is the prognosis? What are the options? What is most likely to happen? What should happen? Any ideas? Anybody?

From: "The right crowd" | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 21 February 2006 11:13 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
Starting with thomas

I'm talking about hunter-gatherer existance, not pastoral societies. Quite frankly the whole "nasty, brutish and short" nonesense is an ideological construct that we force on a people who had no concept of these things whatsover(untill certain people indoctronated and forced them to believe otherwise)

As for the democratization of enlightenment rationalist science and technology, you're not looking at the opressive dynamics which put it, and keep it together in the 1st place. It is no different then saying "democratize the workplace", it's essentially a rebuffing of capitalist social relations which should be destroyed in their totality. Alienation is alienation in this regard. Whether it is shared collectively or whether an elite sends people to mines and factories does not change the complex alienating nature. And society part of this process of alienation btw.

quote:
Mandos:
Oh, sorry. 7 or 8 years. In one of his articles available online JD refers to 25 year life expectancies vs 19 or something. I've seen claims that in the tropics one might live to over 31 or something! It's imagined in some quarters that population growth (== lack of effective and widely-used contraception) may have anyway forced the use of high-yield food production techniques, ie, agriculture. Ironically.

There is no definitive work on how long hunter Gs lived as far as I know. It depends on how productive the geography is. There certainly old men and women who exist in these societies. Once you have a productive food source and can avoid the gangreen and other infection it is not out of the question in the least that a hunter-gatherer can live to what we construct as "old age". Beyond that as I said, people like you force the construct of time on people who are very aware of it, or the institution of death for that manner.

quote:
Critiques of "progressivism" suffer from an unfortunate weakness: what is the scale on which you are measuring progress? I mean, most immediately, time scale. It isn't linear---but it isn't circular either. As far as I can tell, it's epicyclic with an upward trend. You're right that life expectancy has been low for much of agricultural history, but to reach our current levels we had to eventually achieve industrialization.

I'm not measuring anything. You are doing so with the use of the word upward. You should read the Archeology of Knowlege by Michel Foucoult sometime. History is simply a corresponding will to power with merging discourses of the past shaping the future. This will to power is ultimately existential. Think of history as branches growing twisting and turning some hit dead ends, others simply merge. Through this there is no greater epoch then another.What history should do is correspond to what we want.

quote:
I invite you to seriously treat the reality of time as an abstraction while you age.

Well seeing that it has been internalized, I will be aware of it till I die, however the internalization does not change the fact that it is simply a social construct. Ask someone from a Moken band/fisher society what age is.

quote:
It's not a semantic point. You are attempting to define a "better mediation" and "worse mediation". I'm saying that your choices are simply based on an incorrect metaphysics.

I've made what I think is mediation pretty clear. The artificial division between work and play. When a society is constructing techniques and science that conform to their everyday lives on a direct level it is not mediation in how I see it.

quote:
The """unmediated""" life you want to lead is thus at the expense of others. And hence, thankfully, it's unlikely that you will ever live it. Yes, this "unmediation" is very much based on a resentment of Prometheus.

No shit shirly. It's at the expense of many a technocrat and capitalist. I am well aware that might makes right and will respond to that fact accordingly. However as the material structures of oil and environment change, it looks like my thing may be a bit closer.

Your agency may have the day now, but agencies change.

[ 21 February 2006: Message edited by: Vigilante ]


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Rufus Polson
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3308

posted 22 February 2006 01:52 AM      Profile for Rufus Polson     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Well, Vigilante is way out there in a number of ways, but I think the "life expectancy" angle is the wrong one to emphasize here. Short life expectancies back when were *average* life expectancies, and the average was low because lots and lots of people died really young (and lots and lots of women died in childbirth). Once out of childhood, people often lived fairly long.

And I would have to agree that, considering many of the significant advances in life expectancy were based on hygiene, clean water and such, it wouldn't be that hard for a new hunter-gatherer society that retained some modern knowledge to maintain much higher average life expectancy and generally pretty good health.

. . . As a result of which, unless they *also* maintained the ability to produce condoms and other forms of birth control, there'd be a population explosion and the whole thing would start again.

Meanwhile, the thing about Vigilante's low-tech permaculture (a term with a ludicrous amount of hubris to it, but I digress) is that unless it was absolutely universal it would quickly be marginalized. Anyone who *didn't* decide to go low-tech would stomp on them any time there was a conflict over resources. This sort of primitivism and deliberate political atomization (as opposed to decentralization, which can still imply some degree of cohesion over a large area) is irrelevant because it's socially unsustainable. What Vigilante is saying is "let's build a system calculated to lose when it meets up with nearly any other possible system." Even if it could somehow be made universal, its atomized nature would lead to variation, and in short order those variations that violated Vigilante's ideas of what's desirable would take over. In that sense, it's about the least perma of possible cultures.

So I wouldn't worry about Vigilante's ideas. Whether desirable or not, they're irrelevant. I would say the task of the left and/or the green is to arrive at the best possible culture, for us and the planet, that is capable of maintaining itself not just in terms of physical and biological but social and political environment.


From: Caithnard College | Registered: Nov 2002  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 22 February 2006 01:56 AM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
I'm talking about hunter-gatherer existance, not pastoral societies. Quite frankly the whole "nasty, brutish and short" nonesense is an ideological construct that we force on a people who had no concept of these things whatsover(untill certain people indoctronated and forced them to believe otherwise)

It's not indoctrination. It physically was. Engraved in physical pain. As soon as someone is aware that there exists a state of less pain (attainable or otherwise), then your alleged "indoctrination" is complete.

quote:
As for the democratization of enlightenment rationalist science and technology, you're not looking at the opressive dynamics which put it, and keep it together in the 1st place. It is no different then saying "democratize the workplace", it's essentially a rebuffing of capitalist social relations which should be destroyed in their totality. Alienation is alienation in this regard. Whether it is shared collectively or whether an elite sends people to mines and factories does not change the complex alienating nature. And society part of this process of alienation btw.

This "complexity" and "alienation" is freedom.

quote:
Well seeing that it has been internalized, I will be aware of it till I die, however the internalization does not change the fact that it is simply a social construct. Ask someone from a Moken band/fisher society what age is.

You appear to be confusing the measurement of time with time. I'm aware that some people may not have entirely eaten of the Tree of Knowledge in this regard, so to speak. That doesn't mean that they aren't subject to time. Ignorance of it is not freedom. Though for some it may be bliss.

quote:
I'm not measuring anything. You are doing so with the use of the word upward. You should read the Archeology of Knowlege by Michel Foucoult sometime. History is simply a corresponding will to power with merging discourses of the past shaping the future. This will to power is ultimately existential. Think of history as branches growing twisting and turning some hit dead ends, others simply merge. Through this there is no greater epoch then another.What history should do is correspond to what we want.

No, you're denying that there is a measurement and a direction, which is itself a measurement---because to do so, you have to claim that there is no direction. Later branches are qualitatively different from earlier ones. There is, one way or another, a rate of change, and rate at which we evade entropy.

quote:
I've made what I think is mediation pretty clear. The artificial division between work and play. When a society is constructing techniques and science that conform to their everyday lives on a direct level it is not mediation in how I see it.

It may surprise you to imagine that I too deplore the division between "work" and "play". But the distinction is engraved on the physical world itself. So long as we must act to avoid physical suffering, there will always be such a distinction. And human beings are so diverse. What is "ludic" for you will never be "ludic" for me. And this would even be true in your utopia, because humans are very productive in generating new thoughts.

So far, the only thing that remotely offers us a the chimera of a ticket out of Nature's physical slavery is the complex alienating technology which you abhor...

quote:
No shit shirly. It's at the expense of many a technocrat and capitalist. I am well aware that might makes right and will respond to that fact accordingly. However as the material structures of oil and environment change, it looks like my thing may be a bit closer.

Your agency may have the day now, but agencies change.


The "technocrats" and "capitalists" are well equipped to survive, dude. It's not the Enemy that's going to bear the brunt of the suffering, if it is to come. Your utopia, if it ever comes to pass, will be built on the graves of the masses. With a headstone labelled "wishful relativism".


From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 22 February 2006 02:01 AM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Well, Vigilante is way out there in a number of ways, but I think the "life expectancy" angle is the wrong one to emphasize here. Short life expectancies back when were *average* life expectancies, and the average was low because lots and lots of people died really young (and lots and lots of women died in childbirth). Once out of childhood, people often lived fairly long.

And I would have to agree that, considering many of the significant advances in life expectancy were based on hygiene, clean water and such, it wouldn't be that hard for a new hunter-gatherer society that retained some modern knowledge to maintain much higher average life expectancy and generally pretty good health.

. . . As a result of which, unless they *also* maintained the ability to produce condoms and other forms of birth control, there'd be a population explosion and the whole thing would start again.


I thought this was the entire point of the Life Expectancy discussion.

quote:
Meanwhile, the thing about Vigilante's low-tech permaculture (a term with a ludicrous amount of hubris to it, but I digress) is that unless it was absolutely universal it would quickly be marginalized. Anyone who *didn't* decide to go low-tech would stomp on them any time there was a conflict over resources. This sort of primitivism and deliberate political atomization (as opposed to decentralization, which can still imply some degree of cohesion over a large area) is irrelevant because it's socially unsustainable. What Vigilante is saying is "let's build a system calculated to lose when it meets up with nearly any other possible system." Even if it could somehow be made universal, its atomized nature would lead to variation, and in short order those variations that violated Vigilante's ideas of what's desirable would take over. In that sense, it's about the least perma of possible cultures.

So I wouldn't worry about Vigilante's ideas. Whether desirable or not, they're irrelevant. I would say the task of the left and/or the green is to arrive at the best possible culture, for us and the planet, that is capable of maintaining itself not just in terms of physical and biological but social and political environment.


Oh, I'm totally well aware of this, but...

1. Your position could be taken against any dream of utopia. I think discussing utopia is a necessary component in any discussion of progress: where are you going?

2. Of course Vigilante's ideas are irrelevant, since their realization is now entirely predicated on a belief that mass death is inevitable. So, in real terms, all we can do is shrug. BUT if I didn't discuss irrelevant ideas, I'd hardly write anything at all on the Internet. And THEN where would I be???

(Don't answer that.)


From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 22 February 2006 04:22 AM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
Rufus raises some very interesting points which certainly deserve response.

He is correct that a "future primitive"(Zerzan's title)society would be smart to take control of certain modern techniques that could correspond to primitive existance. As for the birth control thing, that is certainly an important thing that many people will have to think about in the future as the industrial aparatus that produces condoms seems destined to crash. That combined with the fact that there just are'nt enough damn rubber trees the world around. I would hope that we(certainly womyn) could find natural ways so to speak(the billings thing could be one). Beyond that I think you underestimate the ability hunter-gatherers have to keep their numbers down. Many anthropologists have noted that they do do this(to the point of infantcide in extreme as the last resort). The general view that population pressure helped undo primitive life is not very well supported anthropologically in my view. If anything it was the instrumental nature of the agricultural society that did it.

Now your point about my luddic/primitive life being universal, well that's obviously my most prefered option. A world-wide change of agency would be the most secure option at the end of the day. As for your point about atomization, I would say that prehistoric balkanization may very well have been primitive society's undoing, however it was an undoing over 100 000 years in the making, something far more long lasting then what we have embarked on for the last 11 000. Even with those problems and continued problems in certain areas like New Guinea or southern africa and other areas where primitive existance still goes on, it is still a sustainable model. However to deal with this issue I and other contemporary post-structural types propose an agency of immanent multiplicity or multiple-singularities. In practace what this should mean is that those who live within affinities can be aware that they exist contingently with other existances. Hopefully this might solve the problem of being locally balkanized. As for variation, I think that will always be the case. There were certainly hunter-gatherer societies more pugnacious and ready for civilization then others. I can ultimately accept this as part of our chaotic contingent existance. And again, this variation that existed in prehistory still lasted over a hundred thousand years. So at the very least I'll take that. What matters is me and those I find affinity with at the end of the day.

Now in the event that a change of agency does not happen, this does not stop the possibility of my type of society existing in pockets. You seem to say without hesitation that they would just be taken over. You obviously have not been paying attention to the evolution of war in the 20th century. It's all about the cell games baby! When it comes to war, cell based warfare(from vietnam to Iraq)works. And no industrial army will lie to itself otherwise. It would actually help(now and certainly in the past) the surviving band societies alot if they literally banded together and fought, though not into a tribe or chiefdom like what happened in North America and other places, but a band of bands so to speak. Ultimately besides being a damn egalitarian way to live, if the tactics are correct, you can wear down the big guys as well


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 22 February 2006 04:43 AM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Mandos:
It's not indoctrination. It physically was. Engraved in physical pain. As soon as someone is aware that there exists a state of less pain (attainable or otherwise), then your alleged "indoctrination" is complete.

You should tell that to the San who seem to be embracing what modernity and civilzation is giving them

quote:
This "complexity" and "alienation" is freedom.

With freedom like this, slavery is in some bad need of enemies.

quote:
You appear to be confusing the measurement of time with time. I'm aware that some people may not have entirely eaten of the Tree of Knowledge in this regard, so to speak. That doesn't mean that they aren't subject to time. Ignorance of it is not freedom. Though for some it may be bliss.

And with knowledge like this, ignorance doesn't need friends. The whole concept of time is simply an ontological concept. Please show some objective begining to begin all beginings(hint the big bang is not an option). There is none, only contingency.

quote:
No, you're denying that there is a measurement and a direction, which is itself a measurement---because to do so, you have to claim that there is no direction. Later branches are qualitatively different from earlier ones. There is, one way or another, a rate of change, and rate at which we evade entropy.

I'm not denying measurement, I'm certainly denying direction as it kinda relates to the earlier point on time being an ontological concept. I understand that someone hooked on newtonics the way you are has a hard time understanding this.

quote:
It may surprise you to imagine that I too deplore the division between "work" and "play". But the distinction is engraved on the physical world itself. So long as we must act to avoid physical suffering, there will always be such a distinction. And human beings are so diverse. What is "ludic" for you will never be "ludic" for me. And this would even be true in your utopia, because humans are very productive in generating new thoughts.

Your distinction beween the two is about as artificial as your distintion between nature and technology. Survival is not inherently alienating in the least so long as you have a direct sense of sustenence. Ever seen the look on a hunter's face after he's made a kill and takes it home to feast. Hardly alienating.

quote:
The "technocrats" and "capitalists" are well equipped to survive, dude. It's not the Enemy that's going to bear the brunt of the suffering, if it is to come. Your utopia, if it ever comes to pass, will be built on the graves of the masses. With a headstone labelled "wishful relativism".

They will only survive as long as the agency remains and people don't get off their attachments. You assume that people can't change.

[ 22 February 2006: Message edited by: Vigilante ]


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Zatamon
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3912

posted 22 February 2006 10:23 AM      Profile for Zatamon        Edit/Delete Post
I want to thank all the participants in this thread. Now I have one more very good example to use in the "Science and the Public" chapter of my book.
From: "The right crowd" | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged
anne cameron
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8045

posted 22 February 2006 11:07 AM      Profile for anne cameron     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Vigilante: now I'm confused. I thought we were discussing "what if" in a non-technologized world... and you tell me Mexican and other workers will be picking fruit and vegetables...

How does it get from there to here?

I thought we were agreed we were going to try to live a "self sustaining" life... importing oranges and tommytoes from Mexico seems to me to be non self sustaining...and those miners you mentioned, how do they get paid and how does what they produce get to market...

We aren't going to feed ourselves year-round with a backyard salad garden. Even "perma culture" isn't going to keep a family of four alive year-round. The eighty to ninety per cent death rate isn't going to be restricted to the nameless hordes of fourth world peasants, our cities will be empty very quickly and those with a bit of land and the know-how to raise food will need weapons to keep the desperate refugees away.

Roast robber will feature on many menu's, I suspect, as will Pate of Plunderer.


From: tahsis, british columbia | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged
retread
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 9957

posted 22 February 2006 03:31 PM      Profile for retread     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Thing I noticed about most (though probably not all) anti-technology utopians ... none of them have ever spent any great extent of time in nature unless they had loads of modern conveniences like store bought food, down sleeping bags, nylon tents, matches, modern clothing (especially boots), etc. Most have never tried to spend a week outdoors in winter even with that junk.

When I was young and somewhat of a trouble maker I did a survival course, something designed by a few of the elders to help get some of our heads together. It was a good course, lots of spirit work. At the end there was a test - you're dropped off in the middle of the forest with a knife (modern manufacture ... much better steel than you'd get without technology) and clothes (did I mention boots?). They come pick you up a week later. Try it sometime, it'll really change your appreciation for technology. If you really want a taste of what it would be like, try it in winter ... didn't feel up to that one myself.

Not that there aren't massive problems in the world, but getting rid of technology ain't going to help.


From: flatlands | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged
Mr. Magoo
guilty-pleasure
Babbler # 3469

posted 22 February 2006 03:38 PM      Profile for Mr. Magoo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I bet they're a hoot to watch in the Emergency Room as well, bravely hemorrhaging all over and enduring the pain rather than compromising their principles. "No EKG for me!" they'd shout honourably before dying as they lived.
From: ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø, | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
Digiteyes
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8323

posted 22 February 2006 04:00 PM      Profile for Digiteyes   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Vigilante, I actually had to look up definitions of permaculture.
quote:
The word "permaculture" was coined in 1978 by Bill Mollison, an Australian ecologist, and one of his students, David Holmgren. It is a contraction of "permanent agriculture" or "permanent culture."

Permaculture is about designing ecological human habitats and food production systems. It is a land use and community building movement which strives for the harmonious integration of human dwellings, microclimate, annual and perennial plants, animals, soils, and water into stable, productive communities. The focus is not on these elements themselves, but rather on the relationships created among them by the way we place them in the landscape. This synergy is further enhanced by mimicking patterns found in nature.


There is nothing in this definition that implies that a permaculture is less laborious than agriculture.

I think you're looking for the Garden of Eden, -- but even that required some cultivation work on Adam's behalf.

Get out of the wilds of Mississauga for a while and see some of the world: really, your writing smacks of philosophy books and fantasy.


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
nonsuch
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1402

posted 22 February 2006 07:05 PM      Profile for nonsuch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Vigilante .... really, your writing smacks of philosophy books and fantasy.

So what? At least s/he thought about the question. And if anybody made the effort (admittedly, it is and effort - i hope hir writing style clarifies in time, like a good wine) to read all of what s/he wrote, they'd see that hir views aren't so much utopian as moderately pessimistic. One of the questions posed was: "What would you prefer to happen?" and its' hir honest answer to that question that raised most ire.
Well, you don't get to censure anyone's wishes. And you won't dissuade anyone from a point of view by saying: "Your wishes are just wishes and that makes them wrong and stupid!" (..."and fascist" - I mean, really! WTF, Fidel?)

Of-bloody-course human population needs to decrease. There are far more humans now than one planet can sustain, even without all of them aspiring to the standard of living that a small imperialistic minority has arrogated to itself over the most recent eyeblink of history.
Back in the 1970's and earlier, this was obvious to many, and various efforts were made to curb population growth ... but some political/ religious/ human rights faction raised a stink over each one, and the iniatives were discontinued. Result: 3 more billion people with not enough to eat and plenty of misery to bear. (But, hey! Lots more cheap labour for the useless crap factories; lots more useless crap for the imperialistic minority to consume.)

Any species will populate its territory to the breaking point. When the breaking-point is approached, the population must either decline or migrate to a new territory. Agriculture and civilization - and their offspring, technology - have made human territories habitable for relatively long periods. But also rendered migration a non-viable option. When the breaking-point approaches, a human society either dies in catastrophic numbers or exterminates another society and takes over its territory.

Those are our options: die-off, kill-off or population-control.
You can die off as a result of technology (contaminated water, epidemic, internal strife, birth-defects, cancer); you can kill somebody else off with the aid of technology (sustained bombing, gas-chambers, seizure of food for export, genetic mutilation of food-crops and seeds) - or you can use technology to control population growth.
Using technology to sustain populations simply doesn't work. The more people are fed, the more new people they make. The race is obviously unwinnable, because potential food production is finite and potential procreation isn't.

No, i haven't answered Zatamon's questions; i've only addressed one issue. I may return for more (or not.)

[ 22 February 2006: Message edited by: nonsuch ]


From: coming and going | Registered: Sep 2001  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 22 February 2006 07:19 PM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Using technology to sustain populations simply doesn't work. The more people are fed, the more new people they make: reproduction will always outstrip food production. The race is obviously unwinnable, if only because potential food production is finite.

This is plainly untrue. THe relationship between technology---or food availability---and population is not linear. We see declining birth rates in many countries where there is the greatest plenty.


From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
obscurantist
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8238

posted 22 February 2006 07:32 PM      Profile for obscurantist     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by nonsuch:
Of-bloody-course population needs to decrease. There are far more humans now than one planet can sustain. Back in the 70's and earlier, serious efforts were made to curb population growth ... but some political/ religious/ human rights faction always raised a stink and most of the iniatives were discontinued. Result: 3 more billion people with not enough to eat and plenty of misery to bear. (But, hey! Lots more cheap labour for the useless crap factories!)

This raises the point, alluded to earlier in the discussion, of differential use of resources. It's the relatively thinly populated North America (and, to a lesser extent, Western Europe), and other relatively affluent countries, that use a greatly disproportionate part of the world's resources.

You could say that it's not so much a question of too many human beings as it is a question of too many North Americans, or too many people trying to live like North Americans. Or perhaps even (seemingly paradoxically) not enough North Americans -- I mean that if North America were as densely populated as, say, China or India, we might find it necessary to adopt a somewhat more efficient lifestyle than the one we have.

[Edit -- Mandos beat me to this point, and put it more pithily.]

[Edit -- on reflection, I see he wasn't saying exactly the same thing I was.]

[ 22 February 2006: Message edited by: Yossarian ]


From: an unweeded garden | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
nonsuch
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1402

posted 22 February 2006 07:45 PM      Profile for nonsuch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
This is plainly untrue. THe relationship between technology---or food availability---and population is not linear. We see declining birth rates in many countries where there is the greatest plenty.

What you've got hold of there is not a pair of giant jolly green balls, but an apple and an orange.
Apple: Increase of food production is linear, and absolutely limited by available space. Even if you grow crops under the ocean or in abandoned mine-shafts or in high-rise hydroponic gardens, there is only so much room. The potential increase of human population is... unimaginable.
Orange: Yes, the better off people are, the fewer children they tend to have. The better the perceived chances of a baby surviving to adulthood, the fewer babies a couple feels they need to have ... the more each baby will be cherished and protected ... the more special and entitled it will feel ... the more resources it will demand to use up ... the more babies of other cultures it will consider its right to enslave or exterminate.

From: coming and going | Registered: Sep 2001  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 22 February 2006 08:24 PM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Umm, you made a statement about population growth. ie, you said that more available resources causes people to have more babies, effectively. Which is not true.

However, it is perfectly reasonable to say that having fewer babies could cause more resource consumption overall. However, even that isn't necessarily linear. One of the reasons why people don't have babies is not just that their children's likelihood of survival is greater, but because, simply, they have the option not to have children. In developed countries in particular, and even increasingly in poor countries when contraception becomes more available, women especially often decide...to have fewer children.


From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
nonsuch
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1402

posted 22 February 2006 08:25 PM      Profile for nonsuch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Yossarian:
This raises the point, alluded to earlier in the discussion, of differential use of resources.

Sure. That's what has happened in the past; that's what is happening now.
To a large extent it was command of superior technology that made the discrepancy possible.
So, when Zatamon asks: "Have we lost more than we've gained?", he's actually talking to only one of two very different populations. For the one he's asking, the obvious answer is "Absolutely! we got dentistry, indoor plumbing and long life." For the one that's in no position to respond, the answer is, "Yes, you have. And we lost. We got infinite national debt, overpriced bluejeans and rotten teeth from Coca-cola."

quote:
It's the relatively thinly populated North America * (and other relatively affluent countries), that use a greatly disproportionate part of the world's resources.

Yes. But the appearance of a thinly-populated map is somewhat misleading. Much of the North American landscape is inhospitable to human habitation. And then, you might want to consider what thickly-populated human habitation means in terms of other species - many of which we can't survive without.

*

quote:
and, to a lesser extent, Western Europe

Lesser? i don't think so! Western Europe is about to suffer the most catastrophic climate change, due to industrialization. No place to move, no natural resources left, jam-packed population, not a chance in hell of beating the US out of Arabian oil.

quote:
You could say that it's not so much a question of too many human beings as it is a question of too many North Americans, or too many people trying to live like North Americans.

I did say that - or meant to.
quote:
Or perhaps even (seemingly paradoxically) not enough North Americans -- I mean that if North America were as densely populated as, say, China or India, we might find it necessary to adopt a somewhat more efficient lifestyle than the one we have.

Well, the Chinese and Indians haven't. In fact, back at the watershed i recall (there have been several; mine happens to be 1976) China and India were in a position to adopt a different policy; to strive for local, sustainable economies; to nourish the people instead of the state. They both missed that chance. Now, they're as screwed as the West.

From: coming and going | Registered: Sep 2001  |  IP: Logged
nonsuch
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1402

posted 22 February 2006 08:43 PM      Profile for nonsuch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Mandos:
you made a statement about population growth. ie, you said that more available resources causes people to have more babies, effectively. Which is not true.

Yeah, it is, all things being equal. Feed them basic survival rations, and they will multiply.
It's technology that makes things unequal. Feed them gourmet ice-cream, and they will have only one little self-entitled scion.

quote:
However, it is perfectly reasonable to say that having fewer babies could cause more resource consumption overall. However, even that isn't necessarily linear. One of the reasons why people don't have babies is not just that their children's likelihood of survival is greater, but because, simply, they have the option not to have children.

This is where the religious/ political/ ideological factions come in. "Reproductive choice, is the devil's/ westerners' / bad guys' attempt to suborn our women."
quote:
In developed countries in particular, and even increasingly in poor countries when contraception becomes more available, women especially often decide...to have fewer children.

... and the men in charge, who have neither to bear nor feed those children, go ballistic.
And why, for heaven's sake, does it take so long for contraception to become available in poor countries?

From: coming and going | Registered: Sep 2001  |  IP: Logged
obscurantist
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8238

posted 22 February 2006 08:44 PM      Profile for obscurantist     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by nonsuch:

Well, the Chinese and Indians haven't. In fact, back at the watershed i recall (there have been several; mine happens to be 1976) China and India were in a position to adopt a different policy; to strive for local, sustainable economies; to nourish the people instead of the state. They both missed that chance. Now, they're as screwed as the West.

But it's understandable that India and China would try to emulate the North American and European models. The problem isn't so much that they're trying to act like North Americans, as it is that North Americans continue to act like North Americans. Bill McKibben summarized the impending "tragedy" in a recent Harper's article that I posted in another thread last week:

quote:
It used to be said that the point of travel was to see your own home more clearly. So let’s look. When you’re standing in Shanghai, at the city’s urban-planning exhibition, admiring the basketball-court-sized model of the city’s future plan, with every skyscraper and apartment complex carefully detailed, you just viscerally know that there are two countries that really count right now. You just viscerally know that this is the story that will define the future. China and the United States are now the world’s biggest consumers of raw material, and of food, and of energy. Are they therefore morally equivalent?

That’s not just a rhetorical question - it’s a deeply practical one. And answering yes has a certain straightforward appeal. ...

The longer I looked, however, the less alike the two nations seemed. Take cars, for instance. Cars define America - their proliferation is the single physical item that makes our continent’s civilization unique. We have nearly the same number of cars as we have people. In China the number of automobiles is growing fast. But if the Chinese sell six million cars this year, that will be eleven million less than the United States - in a population more than four times as large.

In fact, the size of China’s population queers every discussion of numbers. If you’re interested in global warming, it doesn’t make moral sense to divide up the atmosphere by nations - if it did, then there’d be nothing wrong with Luxembourg producing as much waste as America. ...

As Ma Jun - a daring environmentalist who’s taken big risks to write his books - told me one day, “Nearly eighty percent of the carbon dioxide has come from 200 years of the industrial world. Let’s be realistic. Those historic burdens have to be shouldered by those countries that have enjoyed the benefits.” In any just scheme, it’s not morally required of the Chinese to help solve global warming, any more than it’s your kids’ responsibility to work out the problems in your marriage.

This does not mean that the Chinese should burn all their coal. (After all, they’ll have to deal with a wrecked world, just like your kids will have to deal with a broken home.) What it means is that we face an actual tragedy. The world, as it turns out, cannot afford two countries behaving like the United States. ...

And the reason it’s an actual tragedy is because, right now, a rapidly growing China is actually accomplishing some measurable good with its growth. People are enjoying some meat, sending their brothers to school, heating their huts. Whereas we’re burning nine times as much energy per capita so that we can: air-condition game rooms and mow half-acre lots, drive SUVs on every errand, eat tomatoes flown in from Chile. I understand that our country has people living in poverty, some of whom are now losing their jobs to Chinese competition, but that’s simply our shame - we have all the money on earth, and we haven’t figured out how to spread it around. ...

Which is why it seems intuitively obvious when you’re in China that the goal of the twenty-first century must somehow be to simultaneously develop the economies of the poorest parts of the world and undevelop those of the rich - to transfer enough technology and wealth that we’re able to meet somewhere in the middle, with us using less energy so that they can use more, and eating less meat so that they can eat more. (Indeed, baby steps toward such transfers of technology and wealth are enshrined in the Kyoto formula.)

One name for this kind of statistical mean is “Europe” or “Japan”, whose citizens use half the energy of Americans. (And indeed the Chinese would almost certainly be willing to head in that direction. While I was there, for instance, they adopted new mileage standards for cars based on European standards - their showrooms are filling fast with tiny cars, like the Chery QQ, that come with 0.8-liter engines.) But try to imagine the political possibilities in America of taking Chinese aspirations seriously - of acknowledging that there isn’t room for two of us to behave in this way, and that we don’t own the rights to our lifestyle simply because we got there first. The current president’s father announced, on his way to the parley in Rio that gave rise to the Kyoto treaty, that “the American way of life is not up for negotiation”. That’s what defines a tragedy. ...


[ 22 February 2006: Message edited by: Yossarian ]


From: an unweeded garden | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 22 February 2006 08:45 PM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
The jury on doom is still out. Nevertheless, nonesuch, I take your points in a different light than that of Vigilante. Vigilante is claiming that the choices he wants to make are a component of freedom. You, on the other hand, are talking about limits, an empirical question. I'm willing to admit (and dislike) the idea of limits.
From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 22 February 2006 08:49 PM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
... and the men in charge, who have neither to bear nor feed those children, go ballistic.
And why, for heaven's sake, does it take so long for contraception to become available in poor countries?

I don't disagree. But you encapsulated the problem in one correct word: "suborn". At least contraception does become available when the local (male) rulers decide that there is no choice, as in, say, Iran, as I understand it.


From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Makwa
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 10724

posted 22 February 2006 08:56 PM      Profile for Makwa   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:
Ah, the romanticized existence of the noble savage.
You know what Mr. M - I don't like that fucking phrase. Yes I know you are quoting Rousseau and mocking Victorian anthropology, but I still hate the fucking phrase.

From: Here at the glass - all the usual problems, the habitual farce | Registered: Oct 2005  |  IP: Logged
nonsuch
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1402

posted 22 February 2006 09:14 PM      Profile for nonsuch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Yossarian:
quote:
But it's understandable that India and China would try to emulate the North American and European models. The problem isn't so much that they're trying to act like North Americans, as it is that North Americans continue to act like North Americans.

What else would they act like? The problem isn't that everybody conforms to expected models; the problem is that nobody cares enough about the future to break the expected mold.

From: coming and going | Registered: Sep 2001  |  IP: Logged
nonsuch
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1402

posted 22 February 2006 09:33 PM      Profile for nonsuch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Mandos:The jury on doom is still out.

Lucky jury! Or maybe not so lucky: they may come back and find nobody living. There really isn't all that much doubt about doom: we're in for it. How soon? Maybe us, probably our kids, certainly our grand-kids.

quote:
Nevertheless, nonesuch, I take your points in a different light than that of Vigilante. Vigilante is claiming that the choices he wants to make are a component of freedom.

Give him break! He's (probably) young and hopes for a future. I have already benefited from a hideously unbalanced past and there is little or nothing i can do to restore balance. I can certainly see how decentralized and people-oriented control of technology would benefit humankind. And I can't see it happening in a profit-driven economy.

quote:
You, on the other hand, are talking about limits, an empirical question. I'm willing to admit (and dislike) the idea of limits.

I'm not that crazy about it, either. Still, there it is.

From: coming and going | Registered: Sep 2001  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 22 February 2006 11:48 PM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Lucky jury! Or maybe not so lucky: they may come back and find nobody living. There really isn't all that much doubt about doom: we're in for it. How soon? Maybe us, probably our kids, certainly our grand-kids.

Then we may as well party as though it's 1929!

Seriously, though, I'm not convinced. I hear from both sides of the debate a lot. As I mentioned above, I know people at the forefront of nanotech work who believe we're nowhere near the limits. However, they would say that, wouldn't they? But we've had a lot of false prophets of doom too.


From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
nonsuch
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1402

posted 23 February 2006 12:45 AM      Profile for nonsuch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Yeah. People in the past have said: "We better change our ways, or we're all gonna die." and we haven't all died yet, which proves they were wrong, which proves, or at least suggests, that anybody who says we're gonna die is wrong.

Knock-knock!


From: coming and going | Registered: Sep 2001  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 23 February 2006 12:47 AM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Well, it's not so simple as that. There were reasons why they were wrong. For instance, sometimes they underestimated the ability of people to change suddenly.

If you have infinite time, all physically possible prophecies will come true.


From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 23 February 2006 01:21 AM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
Got some adressing to do

Anne my point about mexican migrant workers is that someone has to do the dirty work. And in places like argentina, permaculture is feeding individual families. The most productive you can make permaculture is by linking up ie gurrila gardening.

Retread is not using the term technology properly. There is nothing wrong with using a modern product as you described so long as it conforms to the primitive/luddic context. Heck I see bicycles(a modern/capitalist invention) in the future I'm talking about.

And digiteyes should know that permaculture and luddic/primitive ideas were concieved in practace.
Go look at people like Kascinsky or Eric Robert Rudolf(regretteble as the things he did were) and what they acomplished in the wild.

And permaculture is on balance less labour intensive the what traditional agriculture has been. It is about using the space you have smartly and multiplying your food sources. Take Chiapas for instance, I was reading an instance where this one community would use 1½ hectares of land to plant corn only, however that land can be used much more diversely and sustainably. Here's an article in that regard

http://www.sextosol.org/coffee_rancho_terra_linda.shtml

Lastly to adress one thing that that nosuch said, my view on technology is not so much about pessimism as much as being practical about what works within an egalitarian context. That context for me is one that challenges authority, power and domination to the greatest degree possible as has been the long time anarchist agency. It happens that certain technology has antagonisms and logistics that do not help this(ie division of labour, production specialization, a loss of direct experiance). There are things I like about industrial technology, but the totality of it is not consistant with what my idea of anarchy is. If it was my tune would be different. However Ellul, Mumford, Virilio, Heidegger ect have convincingly shown other wise. It's being practical for me not pessimistic.


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 23 February 2006 01:27 AM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Thing is, people are creative, and soon as someone figures out that they can do something differently, they will. How do you accomodate to novelty?

Like I said, the people I know who like their jobs the most are software developers, some of whom for which their work is literally play.


From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Mr. Magoo
guilty-pleasure
Babbler # 3469

posted 23 February 2006 01:40 AM      Profile for Mr. Magoo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Heck I see bicycles(a modern/capitalist invention) in the future I'm talking about.

Thank God! Then we can ride our bikes over to the nearest other affinity group and say "Hey, are you guys as bored of eating roots and berries as we are?"

But in this future of yours, would we have prescription glasses? Would we be able to X-ray a fracture, or will we just wrap it in hemp wrappings and hope for the best? Would my diabetic niece be able to lay hands on some insulin, or should she just make plans for a painless death in this future?

And when my bike breaks down, will I take to Ye Olde Bikesmith, who'll make individual replacement parts at his anvil and forge, or what?


From: ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø, | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 23 February 2006 02:02 AM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Smithies are alienating labour.
From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 23 February 2006 02:09 AM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Mandos:
This is plainly untrue. THe relationship between technology---or food availability---and population is not linear. We see declining birth rates in many countries where there is the greatest plenty.

There is some truth to this, however it neglects what the fundamentally opressive logic of enlightenment rationality is. It is true that in places like Germany and Quebec that birthrates are declining, however this is bad news for productivity which is needed to keep your "freedom" alive. Productivity requires people, and having women pop out the puppies helps, In Quebec for example(lowest birthrate in Canada) Landry in his final election campeign tried to get women to have more kids, dido in Germany and other European countries with the lowest birth rates. If that fails they keep the world 3rd in certain places so as to entice immigration to make up for that lost productivity. The enlightenment indeed talks about freedom, but it's antagonistic logic simply does not let it be in this regard. If we are ever to return to a life of abundance, we need to part company with modernity and civilization. Because when scarcity is your game as it is for the logic of the enlightenment, your not going anywere but collapse.

quote:
However, it is perfectly reasonable to say that having fewer babies could cause more resource consumption overall.

Not supported by any anthropology thus far. Societies geared toward subsistance put survival first not surplus. If surpluses happen in certain regards it is rare as study of primitive societies can attest. The evidence tends to be the opposite that more babies feeds consumption.

quote:
Vigilante is claiming that the choices he wants to make are a component of freedom.

Certainly a componant of my freedom, and if you understand what alienation is, deep down it is the same for many others.

quote:
Seriously, though, I'm not convinced. I hear from both sides of the debate a lot. As I mentioned above, I know people at the forefront of nanotech work who believe we're nowhere near the limits. However, they would say that, wouldn't they? But we've had a lot of false prophets of doom too.

Yes the addiction to oil similar to being on acid thinking you can fly out of a building, doesn't mean it happens. The nanotech that you speak of(besides sounding incredidibly scary when it comes to biopolitics)is predicated on an oil base, which is dwindling. No more oil, no more nanotech. Maybe the easter islanders prayed to similar gods akain to progress thinking something different and knew would save their civilization. Didn't work.

quote:
If you have infinite time, all physically possible prophecies will come true.

I this the newtonics talking again. Really this cornocopia of yours is like those who sacrificed people to the Sun God.

quote:
Thing is, people are creative, and soon as someone figures out that they can do something differently, they will. How do you accomodate to novelty?

People are certainly creative, they are also existential and not bound to the techno-determinism that you subsribe to. The San for instance have had agriculture forced on them for years, hasn't budged their primitive agency.

quote:
Like I said, the people I know who like their jobs the most are software developers, some of whom for which their work is literally play.

Well fuck, I find video games to be crack and could certainly enjoy creating them, however it does not exist in a vacuum. You have people in Sago and worse parts of China where minors die in the dozens or even thousands in the case of China to make this software possible. And that job is not nearly as much fun.


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 23 February 2006 02:26 AM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
I this the newtonics talking again. Really this cornocopia of yours is like those who sacrificed people to the Sun God.

These invocations of Newton are highly idiosyncratic. I'm speaking in terms of probabilities here. If you have an infinite number of events, every type of event within the domain of probability can be observed. This observation is totally orthogonal to the gist of Newtonian physics--in fact, probability as a component of physics only starts with far more recent figures.

I've generally tended to be accused of being a Cartesian or something, whatever that means. The Newton thing is new.


From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 23 February 2006 02:30 AM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Yes the addiction to oil similar to being on acid thinking you can fly out of a building, doesn't mean it happens. The nanotech that you speak of(besides sounding incredidibly scary when it comes to biopolitics)is predicated on an oil base, which is dwindling. No more oil, no more nanotech. Maybe the easter islanders prayed to similar gods akain to progress thinking something different and knew would save their civilization. Didn't work.

Uhh, I don't think you know what you're talking about. At a nanotechnological level, energy can come from all sorts of things. However, I'm not committed to it as it isn't proven.

The problem is that, well, if you have a lot of opportunities to prophecy, you're likely to get lucky on one of them. I mean, everything's got a telos. The sun will eventually engulf the Earth.

Historical analogy is always poor.


From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 23 February 2006 02:31 AM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Certainly a componant of my freedom, and if you understand what alienation is, deep down it is the same for many others.

But the point is, they aren't a component of my freedom. And as long as a single person thinks like me, you're doomed. We have, you see, eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and are Fallen.


From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 23 February 2006 02:41 AM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Not supported by any anthropology thus far. Societies geared toward subsistance put survival first not surplus. If surpluses happen in certain regards it is rare as study of primitive societies can attest. The evidence tends to be the opposite that more babies feeds consumption.

Then the "anthropology" is on crack. I'm talking about most extant societies. Some people claim that childless couples are the biggest consumers.

If you're right, then I'm very happy, since it only strengthens my point.

quote:
Productivity requires people, and having women pop out the puppies helps, In Quebec for example(lowest birthrate in Canada) Landry in his final election campeign tried to get women to have more kids, dido in Germany and other European countries with the lowest birth rates. If that fails they keep the world 3rd in certain places so as to entice immigration to make up for that lost productivity.
I am a little astonished here. Because the reason for this is so obvious you needn't look at anything like "enlightenment" or any such claptrap.

People age. I have an older relative who broke her hip recently, and she had to have it replaced, and she'll never likely walk painlessly again. She needs young people, most immediately, to help her get around. And she needs them to do all kinds of things for her without which she would die sooner than otherwise.

If people have fewer children, then there'll be less labour to go around to help people like her. She'll need them to have a certain number of babies in no matter what primitivist utopia exists---assuming she could get a hip replacement in that utopia, rather than die on the ground she tripped in agony!

I have a solution! It's called automation.


From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 23 February 2006 03:02 AM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
People are certainly creative, they are also existential and not bound to the techno-determinism that you subsribe to. The San for instance have had agriculture forced on them for years, hasn't budged their primitive agency.

You keep bringing up the San. I am very suspicious that the "experiment" is not "pure."

1. All present hunter-gatherer societies are in contact with ones that are not. Given the option, I imagine it's quite likely that those who didn't like that lifestyle have left. I am perfectly willing to concede that there are people who want to live that way. However, in a primitivist utopia, people who don't like it will have to...suck it up? Or those who are Fallen/"indoctrinated"/subverted by Prometheus simply would not exist?

Not too long ago, I read an SF novel called Kirinyaga that made an interesting point. It was about the leader of the very last indigenous hunter-gatherer tribe in Africa, in a far-future affluent, technological Africa (let's let this be for the sake of argument). The leader has a chance to Start Over and move his people to a new planet specifically conditioned to be like wild Africa. The story is episodic: each chapter consists of a serious problem arising, and the old man putting another finger in the cracking dam. Because what held together his tribe on Earth was, ironically, the option they all had to leave that tribe and take advantage of the technological world around them. On their new world, that option was taken away. Somehow he had to either suppress or buy off every disgruntled individual from then on, because they knew there existed other ways of living. They were Fallen, and he could never accept it. Eventually, technology crept back into his paradise.

It's a novel, but a fascinating analysis.

2. People in such societies may not be given the option to leave, particularly by the dominant surrounding society. Then they'll have to suck it up. And they'll have to fight doubly hard to retain what they already have.

3. All the other options may suck. I'm really very well aware that much of Africa is in situations that suck.

quote:
Your distinction beween the two is about as artificial as your distintion between nature and technology. Survival is not inherently alienating in the least so long as you have a direct sense of sustenence. Ever seen the look on a hunter's face after he's made a kill and takes it home to feast. Hardly alienating.

That look is the look of success. It's the same look a mathematician gets when he solves a major problem or a doctor when he cures a difficult patient or a computer programmer when some complicated code works beautifully. It has nothing specific to that of a hunter.

At the same time, we have to ask why the hunter is hunting. And the answer is...because he needs to eat. And embedded in that statement is a profound tyranny.


From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
obscurantist
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8238

posted 23 February 2006 03:12 AM      Profile for obscurantist     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
That's fair enough -- I guess my point, or the point of the excerpt I was quoting from, is that if anyone has a greater moral right to act the way that North Americans do, it's not North Americans. But I realize just how difficult a political sell this is.

quote:
Originally posted by nonsuch:
What else would they act like? The problem isn't that everybody conforms to expected models; the problem is that nobody cares enough about the future to break the expected mold.

[ 23 February 2006: Message edited by: Yossarian ]


From: an unweeded garden | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 23 February 2006 04:32 AM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Mandos:
But the point is, they aren't a component of my freedom. And as long as a single person thinks like me, you're doomed. We have, you see, eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and are Fallen.

First of all why do I care. If people like you whine within my type of agency tough shit. It's your turn to be on the alienated side(as strange as that seems). Certainly there will always be rebels in a given context. An I'm am a single person who does not think like you, your agency still exists untill such time that there is a massive intellectual shift. One which dimistifies such nonesense as the tree of knowledge. Knowledge is once again relative and corresponds to a particular will to power.

quote:
Then the "anthropology" is on crack. I'm talking about most extant societies. Some people claim that childless couples are the biggest consumers.

If you're right, then I'm very happy, since it only strengthens my point.


Well it depends on what your saying, less people means more abundance, but more abundance does not mean high consumption leading inevitably to civilization as some suggest.

quote:
I am a little astonished here. Because the reason for this is so obvious you needn't look at anything like "enlightenment" or any such claptrap.

People age. I have an older relative who broke her hip recently, and she had to have it replaced, and she'll never likely walk painlessly again. She needs young people, most immediately, to help her get around. And she needs them to do all kinds of things for her without which she would die sooner than otherwise.

If people have fewer children, then there'll be less labour to go around to help people like her. She'll need them to have a certain number of babies in no matter what primitivist utopia exists---assuming she could get a hip replacement in that utopia, rather than die on the ground she tripped in agony!

I have a solution! It's called automation.


It's unfortunate that you are envoking a paternalistic view of old people. It seems pretty clear that this system of ours shits on the elderly pretty significantly. The great crime that has happened as far as I'm concerned is that old people have been told to lose any sense of self-sustinance and retire to the home and have people clean their shit for them. An alienating process both ways. The elderly have also had too much power in civilization as well of course. There should be no pre-set rule that someone has to take care of old people, besides robing the elderly of their individuality in this sense, it enslaves young people in a certain sense as well.
I happen to know of a woman going on a hundred lives next to my aunt and uncle all by herself. She goes against the grain of this ageist paternalism, and I love it. I certainy don't desire anyone to take care of me in that sense if I get old, I prefer the hunter s thompsom/earnest hemingway exit thanks.

There's a word for your automation, it's called the spectacle(Deboard)

Your next line is of course your fetishized techno-determinism. Understand that our agency is what creates technology,not the other way around. And if we so wish to leave the techno-industrial nightmare behind, we can do so accordingly with Mandos and others being the laughing stock of a community.

You are certainly free to try and rebuild industrial society within this new, luddic context, I'll be playing checkers laughing my ass off at you trying so long as your agency has been deconstructed and destroyed.

quote:
That look is the look of success. It's the same look a mathematician gets when he solves a major problem or a doctor when he cures a difficult patient or a computer programmer when some complicated code works beautifully. It has nothing specific to that of a hunter.

The difference is that the hunter is in a far more direct experiance with his mode of power. Both certainly correspond to constructed truths.

quote:
At the same time, we have to ask why the hunter is hunting. And the answer is...because he needs to eat. And embedded in that statement is a profound tyranny.

We all need to eat honey, what you don't realize is that someone is feeding you. You might as well be Terri Fucking Shiavo, a thought that sickens the shit out of me. The tyranny is forcing an underclass to pick your fruits and vegetables to bring them to market or forcing them into non-human holocaust houses. It's tyranny to force people into mines and factories feeding your techno fetish. Why is it in their interest to subjegate their uniquness for you? If your so into the end result of industrial technology why don't your go throug all the stages working it to creation. Less time for affluence then moi I can tell you that.


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 23 February 2006 04:47 AM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Magoo:
Thank God! Then we can ride our bikes over to the nearest other affinity group and say "Hey, are you guys as bored of eating roots and berries as we are?"

But in this future of yours, would we have prescription glasses? Would we be able to X-ray a fracture, or will we just wrap it in hemp wrappings and hope for the best? Would my diabetic niece be able to lay hands on some insulin, or should she just make plans for a painless death in this future?

And when my bike breaks down, will I take to Ye Olde Bikesmith, who'll make individual replacement parts at his anvil and forge, or what?


Getting beyond the unnoying hypotheticals involving bikes I'll respond to magoos concerns.

I actually can't fully tell you how the medical thing would work out in full. I can tell you this, this industrial society of ours is littered with accidents and deaths to begin with. If you ever red that abolition of work that I posted some time ago you'd see that Bob Black does a convincing job showing how the web of industrial technology captures us all in its web and litterally kills and maims us everyday. Getting back to a slower relative moving speed would go along way to less fractured bones. Your other problems our systemic to civilization and agriculture itself. Diabetes is certainly an example of a chronic desease that did not exist for most of our time on this rock. Getting ourselves off all that salt and suger and getting back to a more raw holistic diet would help. In fact the cure to the things you mentioned are mostly holistic as I see it. The modern medicine as I presume you cling to has been largely reactionary, though perhaps some of it could be usefull. Vision would hopefully be one of those things that comes back to its former glory. Anthropologists have noted for instance that primitive people can see stars and planets that we can't.


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Zatamon
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3912

posted 23 February 2006 09:24 AM      Profile for Zatamon        Edit/Delete Post
against my better judgement…

In the question: “Have we lost more than we gained?” the “we” pronoun refers to the human species.

Not only to the nanotechnology-admiring North American middle class, not only to the hurricane victims of New Orleans, not only to the cancer-ridden descendents of the Chernobyl disaster, not only to the survivors of carpet-bombing in Iraq, not only to the depleted-uranium-shell-residue-poisoned children in Afghanistan. The list is a very long one and every one of them has to do with technology one way or another.

I am talking about the human species. All of it. The one living on this planet. I am talking about plain, simple survival. The difference between life and death. The difference between thriving and extinction. The big picture.

Every building has structural elements holding up everything else. Remove any number of partition walls and the building stands. Remove one structural element and the building (or part of it) will collapse.

Nanotechnology is a partition wall. It is luxury, decoration, deck-chairs on the Titanic.

As Vigilante pointed out: oil is a structural element. Remove it, or even seriously restrict it (before a safe substitute like fusion is found) and our entire Potemkin Village of technological civilization will collapse into a heap of rubble. (Non-technological peoples would laugh, but it is hard to laugh when you are poisoned by radioactive fallout from the war fought, around you, over the last drop of oil).

The ‘dormancy’ of our nuclear weapons is a structural element. Remove it (by design or accident) and the missiles will start flying. They are not likely to stop until it’s all over.

Earth’s climate is a structural element. Increase average temperature on the Planet just by a few degrees and we are toast. Literally and figuratively. Agriculture will collapse and we will all starve (not at the same time, not at the same rate), with a few surviving pockets left here and there, fighting for what's left.

Human immune system, developed over billions of years, is a structural element. Destroy, damage or seriously compromise it (by chemical or biological technology) and we are dead meat. The next pandemic will wipe most of us out.

Human population level versus the Planet’s ability to support life is a structural element. You can not put two gallons of water into a one gallon jar (made of fragile glass). It is that simple. Scientists have been shouting it from the rooftops for decades. Take a look at the World Scientists Warning to Humanity document signed by over 1500 of the world’s most prominent scientists (including most Nobel laureates).

Yes, we here in North America, at the moment, are comfortable and relatively safe and definitely better off than our forefathers were before the scientific-technological civilization. Even we lost some important necessities (see my earlier list) but there is a net gain, which is so obvious that it is just plain silly arguing about it.

The majority of the human species, on the other hand, is no better off, or even worse off than they were before science and technology enabled Europe to conquer and colonize them into slave labour, poison their environments and install/maintain brutal dictators among them to keep them down.

The entire human species, as many species in the animal kingdom we killed off, now faces the serious probability of total or partial extinction. It was the misuse of science and technology that made it possible. We, as a species did it, we as its victims allowed it to happen.

However, there is no going back, so what do we do now?

Abandon and reject science and technology and go back to the caves or, as Vigilante repeatedly (and correctly) pointed out: give up our heroin addiction, forget about the deck-chairs on the Titanic and start worrying about speed, direction and ice-bergs looming on our horizon.

Will it happen?

Sure, just as soon as pigs will learn to fly.

[ 23 February 2006: Message edited by: Zatamon ]


From: "The right crowd" | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged
nonsuch
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1402

posted 23 February 2006 02:10 PM      Profile for nonsuch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Mandos:
quote:
Thing is, people are creative, and soon as someone figures out that they can do something differently, they will. How do you accomodate to novelty?

How civilized society usually accommodates new ideas: The first guy who proposes it is jeered and hounded to suicide. The next ten who publish it (without giving the first one credit) are lionized. The first guy who patents the invention is cheated out of the royalties. The next ten who develop it make a nice living. The one rich bastard who buys or steals the patent and mass-produces the invention gets a lot richer. Somewhere around step 3, the idea is corrupted from something that would benefit all mankind to something that benefits a few, while the production process uses up and discards thousands.
(This not a rule, but neither is it a-typical.)

Civilized societies are generally not very adaptable. They have a heirarchy of political and economic leadership that resists change with all its considerable might.
The coming collapse was forecast* some time ago. Technological remedies (though not full solutions) to technology-created problems have been available for 5,6,7 decades, with little or no effort made to implement them.

* Forecast, not prophesied. There is a difference between one individual announcing a message from God or the Vogons (though he may still be speaking the truth) and a hundred or so of the 20th century's greatest thinkers making an informed prediction.
The sailor in the crow's nest of the Titanic didn't "get lucky": he saw an actual iceberg. And history turned out to be a fairly accurate predictor: icebergs had been spotted in the North Atlantic before; ships had sunk there before. This particular iceberg had never been in the path of this particular ship before ... until it suddnely was.

[ 23 February 2006: Message edited by: nonsuch ]


From: coming and going | Registered: Sep 2001  |  IP: Logged
rasmus
malcontent
Babbler # 621

posted 23 February 2006 02:28 PM      Profile for rasmus   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I find so-called "Primitivism" to be one of the most odious, arrogant, elitist, and stupid political philosophies ever concocted, well worthy of resurrecting Voltaire from the dead to compose a sequel to Candide.

What I've noticed in my admittedly scant acquaintance with "Primitivist" thinkers is that none deal convincingly with the central problems of Primitivism. For one thing, you can't sustain current population levels except through intensive agriculture and complex social organization involving massive division of labour, dense urban settlements, and so on. If the existing population of Canada, for example, were to move on to the land to survive using only so-called "primitive" tools, it would be a disaster. The land can at best support a small fraction of our current population without modern agriculture and energy production, what to speak of housing and medical technology. Warmer, less urbanized climates might fare proportionally better, but it still involves a massive drop in population. So, a question I have for primitivists is, how exactly does this genocide take place? Who decides who is worthy of survival? Or are we proposing a Darwinian regime? Who gets to make the decision that people should be subject to that? One thing I've noticed is that Primitivists tend to imagine THEMSELVES enjoying their new utopia. They don't imagine, for example, that they will be culled for the sake of a greater future. I suppose that a truly committed Primitivist will, for the sake of their creed, be the first to offer themselves to be hewn by the blade of regress, or brushed to death by twigs, or whatever mode of sacrifice is apt. In general, however, this problem seems to be disappeared, and it is other people who are doing the disappearing in the Primitivist fantasy scenarios.

If, on the other hand, the process is completely voluntary then it is always going to be restricted to a hyper-marginal fringe and it isn't a political philosophy that is going to go ANYWHERE.


Another problem has to do with the central role of technology to human beings: there is no time in the history of homo sapiens when we have been without technology. A few other animals use twigs, shoots, or stones as tools. But to none is technology as essential to their survival as it is to human beings. There is no climate in which we can thrive without technology. Perhaps there is no locale where we can even survive without technology.

Also basic to human life is social organization.

And as Mandos has said, human beings will go on innovating technology and social organization, no matter what their starting point. Both will be as complex as they need to be give the economies and lifeworlds of the people who make them.

There has never been a "Primitivist" society as such, and there never will be one. Thankfully.

[ 23 February 2006: Message edited by: rasmus raven ]


From: Fortune favours the bold | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
nonsuch
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1402

posted 23 February 2006 02:30 PM      Profile for nonsuch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Zatamon:
quote:
I am talking about the human species. All of it. The one living on this planet. I am talking about plain, simple survival. The difference between life and death. The difference between thriving and extinction. The big picture.

Well, see, there is a biggish stumbling-block right there. You are talking about the human species; you are not talking to the human species.
We may recognize all people as members of a single species; we may discuss the the entire human race as a single entity. But we do not experience ourselves as members of a species.
(If we ever had, slavery and war would be unthinkable, rather than commonplace.)

We have a child, a mother, a brother who is ill and must be saved. We do not have the same urgent concern for the residents of Three Mile Island, or the miners in South Africa. We know that we are mortal; that sooner, or later, even the people we love most will die. We opt, if we can, for later - regardless of the cost to all humanity and all other species.

That's how the balance got screwed up in the first place: whichever human had an advantage used it to gain an even bigger adavantage; allied with other guys who had complementary advantages to form power-structures, which could than gain even bigger advantages...
Snowball + snowball + snowball = avalanche.
We've known this for a long time, and didn't change direction, because we wanted the advantage. Still do.

We know that civilizations grow, become powerful, overreach their capabilities, consume their environment, mismeasure the load-bearing capacity of their underclass, and collapse - or are defeated, carved up and subsumed by other civilizations. The signs are always there to be read, long before the fatal event. Yet we persist in hoping that the same thing won't happen to our civilization. Of course it will - probably sooner.
Nobody is going to pull the golden goose out of their hat at the last minute. Even if they did, we'd probably have it for lunch.

[ 23 February 2006: Message edited by: nonsuch ]


From: coming and going | Registered: Sep 2001  |  IP: Logged
Zatamon
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3912

posted 23 February 2006 03:08 PM      Profile for Zatamon        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by nonsuch:
Well, see, there is a biggish stumbling-block right there. You are talking about the human species; you are not talking tothe human species.

That's how the balance got screwed up in the first place: whichever human had an advantage used it to gain an even bigger adavantage; allied with other guys who had complementary advantages to form power-structures, which could than gain even bigger advantages...
Snowball + snowball + snowball = avalanche.
We've known this for a long time, and disn't change direction, because we wanted the advantage


Of course, nonsuch is absolutely right, on one level.

However, on another level, all of our experiences support the assumption that there is an objective reality out there, whether we believe in it or not (Eugene Wigner notwithstanding). There is such a thing as the human species: "The Third Chimpanzee" as Diamond calls it. It can go extinct, just like any other animal species, regardless whether we are aware of the process or not.

The average homeowner looks around in his house and notices the furniture, appliances, carpets on the floor, wall-paper on the wall. Most of them don't notice the wall behind the wallpaper, holding it up...the studs behind the wall, holding the wall up... the joists under the floor, holding up the studs...the foundation under the joists holding up the floor, holding up the studs, holding up the wall, holding up the wallpaper.

He may have multimillion $ artwork in his house and Persian rugs on the floor, etc, etc, but his house would collapse on top of all of that if one of the structural elements (maybe a post holding up a beam) was accidentally knocked out.

The World Trade Towers collapsed because the burning fuel generated so much heat that it melted the steel brackets attaching the floors to the vertical structural elements in the outside walls. When the floor started collapsing on the others below it, the entire gigantic structure was doomed. It took many years to build up, it collapsed in less than a minute.

One of my favourite TV shows is "Alf" the adorable extraterrestrial, whose planet exploded in a nuclear war. He said: "My grandmother had been warning for years that it would happen...and she would have survived it too if we had not had her committed".

Nonsuch is correct about the mechanism of how humans screw things up. Nevertheless, as I said it before: actions have inevitable consequences and they will happen to us whether we like-them/believe-in-them or not.

And there is such a things as too late. When finally the Titanic crew noticed the iceberg, it was too late. Nothing they could do (and they tried) could save them. No human ingenuity, know-how, technological wizardry could defeat a chunk of ice in the remaining time before collision.

As Eeyore in Winnie the pooh said: "It is a funny thing with these accidents. Nothing actually happens until it does. Only then".

With these cheerful thoughts I am gone again, until and unless somebody says something intriguing.

[ 23 February 2006: Message edited by: Zatamon ]


From: "The right crowd" | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 23 February 2006 04:25 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
I just need to respond to raven here

First let me clarify once again that I and most within the anti-civilization mileu are not primitivists, though it has some pretty interesting views. I think that primitivism where possible should be an option for those who want to use it. However I am under no illusions that the billions we have will need to continue food production of some kind. Some primitivists even agree with this practicality. The question is does it have to be done through the alienating processes that created population pressure to begin with(complex organization and agrilcultural division of labour)I believe the answer is no as it comes part in parcel with a mode of instrumentality that feeds the phenomoena of population to begin with.

And to be fair to primitivists they tend to keep things real on the issue. The obvious thing that they point out is that there is going to be a die-off anyway, so pick your poison. At worst I may very well agree with this. Primies ain't in no position to be no fuckin Pol Pots. And I don't think primitvists are under any illusion that their survival is guarenteed, they are willing to role the dice however as am I. The one thing that spooks us in this regard is this institutionalism of death which needs to be overcome.

And you fall into the same deterministic trap as mandos assuming that we are hard wired in the brain to create industrial technology and global societies. We exist 1st. Once you understand this, you understand that through agency we can create anything we want in theory. I say theory cause power does do quarky things as Simon De Baviore pointed out.


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
arborman
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4372

posted 24 February 2006 06:32 PM      Profile for arborman     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I hate discussions of mass die-offs - they are always rooted in the 'it won't happen to me' assumption that every human has. It will, to most of us.

It wouldn't be 80%, it would be 98%.

We can find other ways - we have options. Vigilante can go ahead and build his log hut, but I'll be here, in this society, trying to make it work better for all its inhabitants. If it fails, it won't be for lack of trying.


From: I'm a solipsist - isn't everyone? | Registered: Aug 2003  |  IP: Logged
nonsuch
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1402

posted 24 February 2006 07:44 PM      Profile for nonsuch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
I'll be here, in this society, trying to make it work better for all its inhabitants. If it fails, it won't be for lack of trying.

I admire your spirit.
But this society has already failed.
There is only the teeny-tiniest vestige of a shadow of a chance that something can be salvaged. If Vigilante brings his bicycle to the commune, and takes blacksmithing lessons, and gets to the nearest heritage-seed bank before the Harpies do ... maybe.

Look at the Katrina survivors to learn everything you need to know about how capitalist society functions.

[ 24 February 2006: Message edited by: nonsuch ]


From: coming and going | Registered: Sep 2001  |  IP: Logged
Tommy_Paine
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 214

posted 25 February 2006 10:26 AM      Profile for Tommy_Paine     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Well, even blacksmithing uses a lot of coal. But on the other hand, you can use it to make chain mail knock offs of Bob Mackie designes. Without technology of some sort, I wouldn't even be able to dream of chain mail pencil skirts and stainless steel stilletos.

See, without technology, civilization is truely dead, and I think the living would envy the dead.


I know I don't have to worry about it, but does anyone put much thought or care into the long, long, long term survival of our species?

I doubt we are the lone species able to wonder at the universe, but the evidence so far seems to indicate that we are. Maybe we are more precious than we give ourselves credit for.

This earth has a limited window as far as being able to support life. Maybe we should be using technology to find a way to blow this pop stand.

Doubtless, there are places and beings in the Milky Way galaxy that haven't even heard of Bob Mackie.


From: The Alley, Behind Montgomery's Tavern | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 25 February 2006 04:53 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
Aborman is quite mistaken if he thinks anti-civilization types like myself are under any illusion that all that survival skills means automatic survival. I am quite falalistic on what might happen to me. However I am willing to take the plunge.

As for trying to reprogram civilization to an egalitarian mode, good luck. Heaven knows the past 11 000 years don't bode well for this hope of yours.

And Tommy like others confuses what technology actually is. As such it is simly 'a practical aplication of human knowledge for a desired end.' As long as this end is not divorced from our lives on a direct level, technology is fine.

Mumford refered to techniques like that as democratic(sic).


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Zatamon
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3912

posted 25 February 2006 07:20 PM      Profile for Zatamon        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
...does anyone put much thought or care into the long, long, long term survival of our species?

...none that I can think of...certainly not in this thread...

From: "The right crowd" | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged
Paul 2057
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 12059

posted 25 February 2006 07:26 PM      Profile for Paul 2057        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Zatamon:
I am writing a book on science in general, Physics in particular. Among other things I wrote the following (please comment if you are interested in the topic).

"We live in precarious times. Science and scientists have lost the trust and respect of the citizenry, wondering if it was worth it after all? The question of “have we lost more than we gained?” is openly asked and many intelligent and honest people start being nostalgic about the vanished innocent and peaceful “Golden Age”.

I have friends who refuse to own a computer, threw out the TV and VCR from their homes that they built “off the grid”, heating with, and cooking on, wood stoves, just like their grandfathers used to.

I do understand their fear of technology, their mistrust of scientists and engineers. I am aware of the self-serving lies, the irresponsible rushing into applications and the smug conceit and condescension many of our scientists treat their fellow citizens with.

I am also aware of the uncountable advantages science gave us – advantages we take for granted and not hesitate for a second to use when in need. Carl Sagan was troubled by this contradiction when, in spite of being an animal-rights advocate, while terminally ill, he took advantage of medical techniques that could never have been developed without experimenting on animals.

The answer, as usual, seems to be sought in the backswing of the pendulum.

The answer, as usual, is wrong.

First of all, there never was a “Golden Age” we can escape back to. Jared Diamond’s magnificent book “The Third Chimpanzee” devotes a whole chapter to the topic of “The Golden Age that never was”.

Second, the culprit is not science and technology, but the way we as a social body collectively use it and allow it to be used. We are all responsible. There is so much greed, hypocrisy and complacency in all of us that unscrupulous parasites thrive in our midst.

Third: we can never put the genie back into its bottle. It is just simply not one of the options. We can’t go back, we can’t unlearn what we know, we can’t just forget our scientific heritage of millennia. Some would remember, some would tempt us with an irresistible bribe of living easier, healthier, longer and soon we would be back where we are now.

So what are we to do?

My advice: “hope for the best”! Hope that enough sanity prevails to see us through this technological adolescence without destroying ourselves and a good chunk of the Planet we live on. Maybe, at great cost to ourselves, we learn how to use the gift of the gods in a responsible way, to the benefit of all, without destroying the world.

If we do, the rewards could be breath-taking. If we did not spend most of our energies, brain-power and resources on making weapons of mass destruction and mindless distractions for both the rich and the poor, then we would have what it takes to usher in the age of a real paradise.

We could easily have abundant, cheap and clean energy for all if we focussed on fusion research. We have had practical nuclear fusion for 60 years in our hydrogen bombs. We can liberate the energy, we ‘only’ need to learn how to control it in a safe and sustainable way.

Once we had this energy source, so many things would automatically follow. We could stop using fossil fuels and thus eliminate the major cause of pollution and the savage imperialist wars now being waged in order to rob third world nations of their oil reserves.

We wouldn’t even have to abandon capitalism to solve the class hatred now tearing many nations apart. If no one was hungry, cold, living in fear and poverty, most people would be happy with their lot of comfort and security. Relatively very few people want to live in palaces and mansions and have their private jets to fly about.

Once we cleaned up our act here on Earth, then we could have a new look at the stars and see if we could find a way to visit them? Imagine the thrill you would feel if we could step off this “pale blue dot” and see what is out there?

No stupid ‘reality-show’ could equal the awe and wonder we would feel, if we could rise above and beyond our pitiful limitations, self imposed for millennia.

Since we can’t go back to a “Golden Age” that never was, our only choices seem to be: either self destruction, or a real utopia.

I vote for the second."

[ 19 February 2006: Message edited by: Zatamon ]


A couple of other posts threads on this board point to what I see as the very heart of the problem with science and mankind.

Scientism. The goofy idea, popular since Descarte that only empirical method and truths are sources of truth.

While the natural sciences and their fruits are just great, achieving near magic, in some instances, scientism, aside from being silly upon examination carries with it terribly dangerous possibilities, many of which are indeed now actualities.


From: Toronto Canada | Registered: Feb 2006  |  IP: Logged
Makwa
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 10724

posted 25 February 2006 09:28 PM      Profile for Makwa   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
A Hopi elder was asked if he would like to contribute to some messages which were being included on an unmanned (unpeopled?) voyage to mars. He wrote his note in traditional script, passed it on, but would not reveal it's meaning. After the ship was airborne, a reporter asked him what the message was, and he replied "watch out for your land."
From: Here at the glass - all the usual problems, the habitual farce | Registered: Oct 2005  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 25 February 2006 09:42 PM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
And you fall into the same deterministic trap as mandos assuming that we are hard wired in the brain to create industrial technology and global societies. We exist 1st. Once you understand this, you understand that through agency we can create anything we want in theory. I say theory cause power does do quarky things as Simon De Baviore pointed out.

It's not determinism. In a sense, it's precisely the opposite. Novelty exists. As soon as a single individual in the desert comes up with the idea that he wants to eat mangoes, disaster (for this localist utopia) is suddenly imminent. It's a worse determinism (and in some sense a pretty scary one) to say that you can have a world in which no one would think and act on such thoughts.

What we need is a system for people to expect some of their novel desires to have some expectation of fair fulfillment. Like any other technology, it's something that we have to work to build, and will take a long time. It's taken a long time, and it will take yet longer, and there's no predicting what the "utopia" is actually going to look like. Vigilante's form of thinking is not much better than an extension of instant gratification thinking, in some respects

Here's a good critique of primitivism and by extension some of the offshoots like Vigilante's theory.

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=2005012715260752


From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 25 February 2006 09:47 PM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
It's unfortunate that you are envoking a paternalistic view of old people. It seems pretty clear that this system of ours shits on the elderly pretty significantly. The great crime that has happened as far as I'm concerned is that old people have been told to lose any sense of self-sustinance and retire to the home and have people clean their shit for them.

Our system sucks because we ABANDON old people. No amount of self-sustenance is going to help my aged relatives when she's lying on the floor with her HIP BROKEN. The only thing that will help her is someone taking her to some form of medical care. If she's ever to walk on her own again, she needs the hip replacement. This has nothing to do with a "paternalistic view of old people." This is simply the physical universe telling you that she has to die in agony, or someone has to help her.

YOU can die in this situation if YOU choose, when you get old. Don't tell the rest of us that we have to, or that we have to see others die.


From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 25 February 2006 10:10 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
I am certainly not advocating uniformity, however there does have to be some general social mode of production as far as technology goes where we avoid killing things in big numbers. Ideas are actually far more open ended and reciporical within the context that I speak of. Your utopia is far more uniform in that everyday life becomes a life of the spectacle. It is exactly as the movie the matrix makes it. In order to sustain your techniques you need efficiancy and that comes through centralizing production and having everyone go to work at a set amount of time and go home probably to get drunk or watch the football game. The process starts all over again. If your ever walking the cosmopoliton scene pause for a minute and observe the sheeple just walking indiscriminately toward whatever like programed robots, it's Nietzsche's concept of herd animal incarnate, the specticle in full glow.

And you don't need a complex specialized paternalistic system to take care of people when they age. Not all old people even ask for it anyway as the example of ukrainian lady next to my aunt and uncles house attest. We don't encourage people to take care of themselves, particularly on the young and old end of the spectrum.

Oh and andrew flood is not exactly someone taken seriously by many anarchists anymore. I think some of the replies do well to debunk him.

[ 25 February 2006: Message edited by: Vigilante ]


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 25 February 2006 10:17 PM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
And you don't need a complex specialized paternalistic system to take care of people when they age. Not all old people even ask for it anyway as the example of ukrainian lady next to my aunt and uncles house attest. We don't encourage people to take care of themselves, particularly on the young and old end of the spectrum.

OK, I already responded in detail to this point, so there's not much more that I can do here. Hip replacements, people, hip replacements.

quote:
I am certainly not advocating uniformity, however there does have to be some general social mode of production as far as technology goes where we avoid killing things in big numbers. Ideas are actually far more open ended and reciporical within the context that I speak of.

Let me put it this way. As soon as Novel Idea X (eat mangoes) hits desert-dweller Y's brain, and Y decides to act on X, the entire cascade of the "spectacle" becomes possible, because for Y to get mangoes to the desert requires a whole lotta complex organization. You need to lobotomize the population to make the "spectacle" unlikely.

quote:
Your utopia is far more uniform in that everyday life becomes a life of the spectacle. It is exactly as the movie the matrix makes it.

The fun part is that I don't really have a fixed idea of what utopia is. I know that this world isn't utopia, but I don't claim to prejudge what world the future will want to live in.

quote:
In order to sustain your techniques you need efficiancy and that comes through centralizing production and having everyone go to work at a set amount of time and go home probably to get drunk or watch the football game. The process starts all over again. If your ever walking the cosmopoliton scene pause for a minute and observe the sheeple just walking indiscriminately toward whatever like programed robots, it's Nietzsche's concept of herd animal incarnate, the specticle in full glow.

And you dare accuse me of paternalism...


From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 25 February 2006 10:31 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
It's hardly paternalism, I have no desire to help those people who enslave themselves that is for them to do.

As for mentioning hip replacements, that is an interesting dispossition, those types of techniques might not be sustained in what I am talking about, then again you give up you get, quite frankly the effects of industrial civilization go along way into causing those injuries, and of course what of those who mine and compartmentalize the parts.

And you commit a slippery slop falacy with the mango example. It is not a given in anthropology that one thing leads to another the way you speak. Again it forgets the fact that we can create anything we want existentially, plus the last 11 000 years can tell us what getting the mango to the desert would entail as far as autonomy goes. Post-history history(whether through writing or oral can tell us of the mistakes before hand. It's a huge part of what surviving indigenous hunter-gatherers do with oral tradition in fighting off civilization in their culture.)
We are not the automotons you claim, certainly not this unique one.

quote:
The fun part is that I don't really have a fixed idea of what utopia is. I know that this world isn't utopia, but I don't claim to prejudge what world the future will want to live in.

Neither do I as I'm not into utopias, however I wish to be left alone to my direct experiances with life and not have to be bothered with going to boring beuracratic meetings or voting. I want a world of equal access where I create my own anarchy,without subjegating others in the process, I can't say the same for you as you would have me return to the mine or the factory, a world of dead labour. I wish to piss on the ash heap of such things one day.

[ 25 February 2006: Message edited by: Vigilante ]


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 25 February 2006 11:38 PM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
And you commit a slippery slop falacy with the mango example.

It's not a slippery slope fallacy. A slippery slope fallacy (which exist because occasionally they come true) would have the form of a string of increasingly pessimal unrelated outcomes. What I am giving you are proposed logical entailments.

quote:
It is not a given in anthropology that one thing leads to another the way you speak.

If that's so, then once again I'd have to say that anthropology is on crack. As soon as people knew that they could, they did. As soon as people figured out how to make lighter spear points (I'm told 75 kiloyears ago), they did. Almost at once. People who don't know they can, don't: they live with what they know.

Does it take a lobotomy to raise a child in a utopia?

quote:
Again it forgets the fact that we can create anything we want existentially, plus the last 11 000 years can tell us what getting the mango to the desert would entail as far as autonomy goes.

What you consider to be autonomy will not necessarily be equally valued---unless you think you can make people value it. "I think I can do it better, so I will." And, guess what, it's determinism to say that s/he can't!

quote:
Post-history history(whether through writing or oral can tell us of the mistakes before hand. It's a huge part of what surviving indigenous hunter-gatherers do with oral tradition in fighting off civilization in their culture.)

Oh, they do a whole lot of other things too. Surviving "hunter-gatherer" societies are a contaminated experiment. Some have been contaminated for a long, long time.

quote:
It's hardly paternalism, I have no desire to help those people who enslave themselves that is for them to do.

This loaded utterance is the very definition of condescension.

quote:
As for mentioning hip replacements, that is an interesting dispossition, those types of techniques might not be sustained in what I am talking about, then again you give up you get, quite frankly the effects of industrial civilization go along way into causing those injuries, and of course what of those who mine and compartmentalize the parts.

Sure. You can let your own grandma lie on the bare ground in agony while you prance around "autonomously." Age weakens the bones. That has nothing to do with industry. The flippancy on behalf of a chimera is...surprising. And it's a chimera.

quote:
Neither do I as I'm not into utopias, however I wish to be left alone to my direct experiances with life and not have to be bothered with going to boring beuracratic meetings or voting. I want a world of equal access where I create my own anarchy,without subjegating others in the process, I can't say the same for you as you would have me return to the mine or the factory, a world of dead labour. I wish to piss on the ash heap of such things one day.

It is your "direct experience with life" thingy that is the root of this problem. There aren't any experiences with life more direct than any other. A direct experience with life is to be able to see subatomic particles and what makes subatomic particles subatomic. Otherwise, c'est tout pareil. A chimera.

And lastly,

quote:
We are not the automotons you claim, certainly not this unique one.

No, the point is that we are not automatons. Precisely, we are not. And because we are not automatons, there will be those among us who do unique things. And some of these unique things are so easily liable to interfere with your utopia.


From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
DrConway
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 490

posted 26 February 2006 12:02 AM      Profile for DrConway     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
We have gained a closure and lost a thread.
From: You shall not side with the great against the powerless. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged

All times are Pacific Time  

Post New Topic  
Topic Closed  Topic Closed
Open Topic    Move Topic    Delete Topic next oldest topic   next newest topic
Hop To:

Contact Us | rabble.ca | Policy Statement

Copyright 2001-2008 rabble.ca