Posted by john on September 04, 2002 at 07:27:38:
In Reply to: Re: Another Rant from Bob posted by Bob - the Alien on September 03, 2002 at 19:36:03:
: The restoration of which you speak -- you beleive that a restoration can occur without some kind of collapse. My question is how? If this is true, and we can simply restore everything, I want to know what the mechanism of it may be so that we can actively work towards it, if possible. As you said, the way for that might be simply to get everyone educated to the point where they tread lightly. I just fear that we are too far gone for that.
Well it's no unified mechanism. I think it is a slow process, just like the geology you mention later. It starts with each generation actively refusing to do what they know is bad. Refusing to promote it, and instilling in their children a deep respect for the earth and all life. n the meantime, we keep working with the mechanistic moel and performing our restorations. These are working. In 20 years we have all but eliminated point source water pollution. We have seen dramatic increases in mirgratory bird populations such as woodstork and sandhill crane. We have removed the alligator from the endangered species list, and the environment is now a household word. Every American child knows about recycling, people don't throw trash out the window ofthe car for the most part. Things are changing. Just look at the environmental voice that shows up in movies and TV shows now. Even low budget ones like Beastmaster. Still there is a long way to go.
I think that developing countries are in a prime position to take the lead in the coming century asthey have the opportunity to skip the mistakes ofthe industrialized world. They can go straight to sustainable. Solar power is becoming a real option, hybrid cars are on the road, certified lumber is the halmark of the hardwood trade. Biodiversity is the buzz word inthe jungles of south America. But the world still needs the radical voices to drive the change. These voices act like tug boats to move the behemoth. Will it be enough? I don't know. But I am certain that it is enough to ensure a viable population of humans left after any population crash.
And I am absolutely convinced that this crash is coming, and may occur in our lifetime. There is a cycle that you can watch, peak and crash, peak and crash. We're getting due for one. Whether this stressfor resources causes a war that thins us out, or people thin out from natural disasters, the result is the same. The population curve speeds up afterwards. But on this note, if we promote sustainable economy and population levels now, then we can stem the devestation. Not stop, but stem. For more on how all of this works, I HIGHLY recommend the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. It was this book that brought me to see the world as I do.
: Now, as for the power of the swamps. I didn't know they were that scary and powerful. I'd like to learn more. I don't think that I will have time this trip, but could you show me of what you speak later this year if I make it back out again? You may be right that it will freak me out, but I'd like to discover that firsthand.
Let's do it. I know the perfect place. Anytime you're ready. Swamps are my homeland! If you're used to nature though, you can handle it. I think the fear is more a perception than a necessity. The environment is just so strange and unknown.
: And I can tell you why it offended me when you made the original comment -- it sounded like an assumption that the reader (I, in this case) had never experienced the power of nature. That seemed presumptious to me. That alone would not offend me, but living in Colorado, I see and hear of life being wasted on a constant basis as people get in over their heads in the mountains. I have worked hard to learn about the natural world so that I can survive only solo journeys through these parts. So I probably took that more personally than it was intended. I'm a flawed being, as are we all, so I apologize if that sent me off on a tangent.
After I responded I thought about this and figured it was that line. I don't know if it's a dialect thing or not. My mom is from the hills of S Carolina, and my Dad is from Ocala. It's about as southern as you get, and we often use this terminology "If you ever experience..." in place of "If one ever experiences..." Believe it or not these colloquialisms get us in trouble more than you'd think, especially in Florida where the urban areas have one dialect and the rural another. I try to watch that, but when I go too fast, I slip into it. Sorry.
: Finally, lets look at your last question:
: "I am curious as to why you seem to promote two opposite positions, one that we can destroy the earth and must be careful to fix it, and one that it is so powerful?"
: I do promote both positions, but I don't find them to be opposite. I think that the earth moves slowly. I think that we move quickly. I beleive that we can kill ourselves faster than the earth can. So yes, I believe that either side of this issue is capable of killing off the other. I just think that we should work to avoid that end, no matter who initiates it.
: And I do see signs that the Earth is preparing to shake us off. The Ring of Fire is starting to warm up, and the earth around the volcanoes in the Pacific NW is rising significantly, as Ranier and the Three Sisters in Oregon prepare to blow. The icecap on Greenland is thinning, and coastal cities may be flooding soon (100 years or so but still soon). There are land masses poised to fall into the ocean that will create tidal waves of epic proportions and take out the Eastern seaboard. These things are ready to happen. But it takes hundreds of years for the Earth to put them into place, and the geologists who are studying them say it may still be a couple hundred years before it all goes.
: So I absolutely beleive that the Earth is ready to shake us up.
: (As an aside, jonvon laughs at me for one of my reasons for living in colorado -- I can't find such a disaster waiting to hit me here.)
I see where you're coming from, but I just point to the fact that humanity has survived an ice age, countless wars, and repeated disasters. I think what we face is more a destruction of our way of life, rather than an end of humanity itself.
: But I think that we can kill the earth enough without its help to prevent life similar to ours. Via wars we would do it quickly. Via industrialization, less quickly. But still quick enough.
Possibly, but the gaia hypothesis says otherwise. I think we assume too easily that we are that powerful. Gaia hypothesis, in the actual ecophilosophical framework in which it was proposed, states that the Earth has a sort of will to preserve itself. The shorthand is that if a planet had only white flowers and black flowers, and a disaster caused most white flowers to die, the black flowers would cause the planet to heat up. So spontaneously more white flowers would begin to survive in order to restore the balance. The mechanism for this is complex, but is most easily explained as a orm of will, hence the name Gaia. In my particular outlook, I call it God because I see the earth as a part of God. But the principle is the same. The earth has measures that we don't even understand yet and I feel confident that it can absorb any level of impact we could inflict on it. Of course we may damage things so bad that most humanity is wiped out before or during this restoration, but again we go back to the mitigation approach, stem it now. For more on this, I highly recommend the classic of Japanese Manga Naussicaa of the Valey of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki. If you don't know much about Manga, it holds the quality and status of literature in Japan. It has been translated. There is an edited movie version, but it isn't released in the US, so you have to find a fan-subtitled version until Disney finally lets it go (they own the US distribution rights) But it focuses on the remnant of humanity after a massive ecological collapse and the way in which the earth reacts to restore itself. Very cool, and it does a great job of incorporating the ecospirituality that we mentioned earlier.
: Ah, well. We get back to the same questions no matter what our differences in these discussions -- what do we do in our own lives, and what do we do to reach out to others on these issues?
:
: : Yeah, one of the limitations of trying to write souch deep thoughts in so short a time, I wasn't able to expound as i would have liked. But most of your comments point to a disagreement in the initial paradigm from which we are approaching the argument. I delved into a decidedly spiritual point of view on many of my comments and I think we got separated there. I will try to clarify line by line.
: : : "As for human superiority, I don't think anyone could really argue that."
: : : You are taking about human capability in your logic. Yes, we are unarguably the most capable species on the planet. But does that truly make us superior? Or are we just the strongest? I think that superiority is only proven when we use our strength to help others more than we help ourselves. And while some people do this, the majority of our species does not. Until this happens, superiority is not proven to me.
: : We are superior when it comes to our ability to survive and dominate this planet. No other species surpasses our ability to do this at this point. This, by definition, is superiority of a kind. But the type of superiority you speak of is quite another. You take a more intellectual benevolent view of the term, to which it can apply, but it isn't the common usage. I simply meant that we surepass other species abilities.
: : : My other reaction to what you said was in your stance of "when this world is restored, they will be a part of it."
: : : What form will this restoration take? Will it be another great catastrophe? The world purged by fire and all that good stuff, leaving only the ones who can live in peace with the new world? Don't tell me that you hope for this just because you are sure to be one of the ones who survive? You seem to not worry about such a catastrophic event, and that concerns me. Although I agree that such a thing may be happenning, I don't look forward to it. I think it is one of the greatest tragedies of all time. I think preparing people to live past such an event is frankly, a nice thing to do. But also a timid thing to do. I say that we should fight to fix the problems, not become resigned to them and tell people how to survive them.
: : Here we reach the ideological divergence. I am operating from a decidedly Christian viewpoint here, but don't actually interpret the Biblical account like many people. As you termed it the whole "purged by fire" thing. I do believe that at some point the world will be restored by a revelation of ultimate Truth, which I believe to be embodied in the person of Jesus (as God's most complete revelation to Humanity). I do believe that there will be much destruction before this occurs, but not as punishment or purification. Rather this is the final conclusion to the "temporal experiment" so to speak, in which no one will be able to deny the Truth because it will be evident to all. I guess you could call this the final ultimate awakening of humanity. I believe that God is ultimately Good and ultimately Pure. Destruction will not be some glorious retiribution to repay the unjust, but a devastating result of humanity's own disregard for the natural order of things, both spritual and natural (once more they are one and the same to me). I'm not talking about moral philosophy here because quite frankly, morals are insubstantial for the most part. People too often justify their code of behavior as God's Will. (as an aside I do believe that there are universal moral laws, e.g. "rape is wrong" but that is a different argument).
: : So to explain my comment, I don't revel in the fact that people suffer, or will suffer. And I don't think myself above anyone else because i have an understanding of ecological principles. By "restored being" I was refering to my belief that God has made it possible for us to be restored to him through his revelation by Jesus. I believe, per Christian doctrine, that Jesus intercedes on our behlaf to bring us into fellowship with the Father. (the wherefores and hows are again another discussion, but one which I am quite willing to pursue in another place/ thread) Anyway, this was the restoration I speak of. This means that I believe that upon that revelation of Ultimate Truth, I will be restored along with all of creation.
: : (Here I feel I must dive aside for a moment to mention that I think in some infinite sense this has already occured, and is merely waiting for it's physical manifestation, or revelation to those who do not see it. Which is my second aside, I believe that no one is turned away. That God has restored ALL of Humanity, but only those who willfully disregard this, or refuse to accept it will be separated from God in this ultimate revelation. To borrow from CS Lewis, I think the doors of Hell will be locked from the inside more out of pride and fear than any sort of divine elitism. [for those theological scholars, forgive my course apoligetics, but I'm trying to stay at least partly on the orignial subject])
: : But this refers to the final end, not any ecological disaster that may occur prior to that point. Civilizations come and go in blood and suffering, that is the way humanity operates. These tragedies may or may not be prevented. However, my comments refered to entropy most specifically. You accuse me later of sugar-coating, but I think it is as much sugar-coating to assume we can counter centuries of repeated devastations and even natural physics to set up a utopian and just society. Even if it could be created, it would inevitably fall apart because of entropy. humans become greedy. If we suddenly divided up all the grain in the world and solved world hunger by equalizing the distribution (which is a viable option as proposed by some environmentalists), eventually one man would realize that he could have power over another man by killing him and taking his alottment. This actually occurs today. Remember Somalia? Most of the UN aid was rounded up by organized crime and sold at outrageous prices. That was why it took military force to make sure the people actually got fed! Face it, people are corrupt. Given the opporunity, one will step on the other. Sure not everyone would, but it only takes one to destroy such a fragile system. So I support the ecological model, resilience through diversity and competition, but this necessitates that some lack. That is why I jump ahead to the final revelation when this system will no longer be the paradigm of our world. This was what I meant by the curse of sin- we are doomed to toil and fight.
: : : One last comment:
: : : "if you ever experience the true power of nature"
: : : You referred to meditating in a swamp. That is the true beauty of nature, not the true power of it. I regularly hike through the mountains, experiencing both the beauty and the power. Sometimes nature will kick up a storm that forces you to change your plans because it will literally blow you off the mountain and kill you. People die up here from the power of nature all the time. I've seen sparks fly off a lightning bolt, move along the ground, and slam people in the back. On a less dramatic level, sometimes when I do climb a mountain, it is so hard on me that I cannot walk for a few days once I am done.
: : Here I sense a little irritation on your part, it fuzzes your logic. I'm sorry if I offended you somewhere, but it seems unfair to emphatically state that my understanding of the "power of nature" is something else by your terminology. I'm sure you don't mean to force your vocabulary on me, but it comes across that way. So to defend myself. There is just as much sublime power in the quiet and still as there is in the raging storm. And if you've never walked a deep swamp, it is hardly hospitable. There are more things present in a swamp that could injure or kill at every moment than in the mountains. I could list them, but that is beside the point. I have hiked both mountains and swamps, and I have found only 1 person, 1 from the mountains, who would even dare to trek a swamp with me, the reason, is they have stated is that there are things there that scare them.
: : Apart from that, my meditation comment referred to the ability to realize the interconectedness of nature. As for power by your definition, no argument. I have experienced raging storms in a boat that would whiten your nuckles. I have dove into black water. I have experinced vertigo on night dives. I have been lifted off the ground in a hurricane. I have cowered under any scrap of shelter in the driving rain. I have swam raging swells of a storm. I have frozen my butt off in the snow on a mountain peak. This kind of power is truly amazing, and as I mentioned before, it proves that the world is far more less concerned with humans than we may think. At any moment it could wipe us all away and be none the worse for it.
: :
: : : And that gets back to my above paragraph. A natural restoration of the planet will be devastating to all life. Its not a positive thought, and I hope that it doesn't happen on our lifetimes. So I hope that you have a greater concern for such an event than I was able to pick up from your written stance on things.
: : I am curious as to why you seem to promote two opposite positions, one that we can destroy the earth and must be careful to fix it, and one that it is so powerful? And why must a natural "restoration" be so violent? I assume that you refer to ecological collapse here, rather than restoration. Because it seems to me that restoration would prevent the collapse, or occur after it. Either way, I am concerned about people who die, but again dieing is a natural process and part of ecology. I can not stop them from dying anymore than I can stop them from committing the ecological destruction that would bring about that death. It may truly be that their actions cause my death as well. But I can only change myself. As it is, I am part of the biggest ecologically criminal culture in the world. If I can tread lightly and work to inform and educate others about this, then it is up to them to decide for themselves how to act.
: : Ultimately, who knows anything though. I reserve the right to be wrong, and to change my mind with or without notice.