By John Feeney:
Humanity’s greatest challenge is upon us. It’s a converging set of ecological problems. No other difficulty we now face has the potential to impact the human future as profoundly as the convergence of climate change, peak energy, mass extinction, groundwater depletion, and a slew of related environmental catastrophes in the making. People need to know about it. It needs to saturate the media, to be in the headlines, in best-selling books, and on talk shows. And we need feature length films about it. By now, there should have been many theatrical documentaries on the subject.
But there have been only two: The 11th Hour and What a Way to Go. Both worthwhile, the latter offers the less sanitized picture of the precipice toward which we’re headed. Excluding some shoestring-budget short pieces, that makes one film so far which has made an effort to present the unblurred truth of this subject.
Now another is in the works and this one promises finally to awaken the public to the challenge ahead. It’s called Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity and it’s from Dave Gardner, one of a handful of people in the world with the training of a filmmaker and a solid grasp on the global sustainability crisis.
Cutting through the smokescreen
Dave is founder of the Colorado Springs growth control group, Save the Springs. His work there caught my eye when, involved in my own fight against urban growth, I noticed he had refined his responses to “growth machine” propaganda to an indisputable level. Statements such as, “Expansion cannot be sustained indefinitely, so a community that pins its hope for prosperity on expansion is guaranteed eventual failure” told me Dave was one activist with the ability to cut through the smokescreen to reveal the truth of our environmental dilemma.
Another of Dave’s great strengths is his ability to connect local growth issues with their counterparts at the global level. He understands how local economic policies promoting population increases interact reciprocally with national and even global population growth. Drawing on his experience with community growth control issues he demonstrates this relationship as it plays out in today’s seemingly endless urban growth. The result is a new clarity for the phrase “Think globally, act locally” as it relates to the growth of population and the economy.
A preview
What can we expect from Hooked on Growth? Here’s what I know: Importantly, it will highlight the causes of our ecological crisis. Population growth, consumption growth, urban growth, and economic growth fuel our our mindless journey to the brink. Through interviews, examples of pro-growth mythology in the media, cutting edge animation, and 60-Minutes-Style case studies, the film will examine these drivers of environmental destruction and their insidious interactions.
To see how these issues play out on the community level, the movie will visit US cities such as Phoenix and Atlanta where the impact on water availability of population growth, climate change and groundwater depletion seem not to worry denial-driven, growth-cheerleading community leaders.
From the film’s website:
We hear from scientists, economists, and world-renowned authors who’ve studied this phenomenon; and from the growth-boosters – politicians, developers and economists-for-hire who promote the myth. We examine the lengths to which communities go to feed the growth beast: Las Vegas, the fastest-growing city in the U.S., and its multi-billion dollar thirst for water to sustain the pace. Colorado’s Front Range, where cities are buying and idling the state’s farms and ranches in an effort to wring out more water to sustain unquestioned urban growth. This scenario is being played out in California, Arizona, and even Florida. In “Hooked on Growth” we’ll assess the I.Q. of this behavior.
A sampling of those already interviewed for the film includes Al Bartlett, Paul Ehrlich, Brian Czech, Hunter Lovins, and Bill Mckibben. This suggests a lineup able to provide key information on issues of sustainability without any of the usual clutter.
A real strength of this film should be its inclusion of commentary from growth-boosters, perhaps even “cornucopians” in the tradition of Julian Simon. Though one might think including such material could work against the film’s message, I suggest it will make it clearer. The basic growth-boosting arguments are so common, and their refutations so seldom heard, many simply assume them to be true. They are, however, logically indefensible. Put them side by side with the essentially irrefutable ecological or pro-sustainability counter-arguments, and viewers will suddenly see through the “growth is essential and good!” propaganda we’ve all heard so often.
I’m glad to know a part of the message of Hooked on Growth is that “even if we manage to decrease per capita consumption and emission, we can’t achieve true sustainability as long as we are increasing population.” This is an issue I’ve been investigating and on which I believe Dave is it exactly right. His message here has to spread if some of those who dismiss the environmental impact of population growth are going to recognize its centrality in the sustainability equation.
But Hooked on Growth won’t highlight only problems. There’s a message of hope associated with Dave’s work, a message that we can replace our futile and self destructive grasping for a prosperity imagined to result from growth with the achievement of true prosperity through a new, harmonious relationship with the earth.
You can help!
Of course, to produce a film this ambitious, a filmmaker needs help! As some of the most successful documentary makers do, Dave is seeking support directly from interested and concerned citizens. You can go here to make a tax deductible donation, volunteer some time to help with the project, or subscribe to any of three email lists designed to keep you up to date on the film, to spread the word, or to provide input. You can even get your name in the credits!
The project is well along, by the way, with 70% of shooting complete. If you’re looking for an environmental cause worth supporting, one which deals in ecological truth, this is one of the few I’d recommend.
Knowing Dave, I’m certain his film will not pull a single punch. From all indications it has every chance of setting the standard for films on this subject. I look forward to keeping abreast of its progress, and can’t wait to see the final product.
_______
Image source: Images used with permission
60 responses so far ↓
Ron Parry // December 21, 2007 at 12:25 pm
It is very encouraging to see someone attempting to educate the general public about this enormous problem. We cannot afford to continue with “business as usual” any longer. We will either make the necessary changes voluntarily or Nature will make the decisions for us.
Steven Earl Salmony // December 21, 2007 at 12:44 pm
If I had two minutes to talk with the President, here is what I would say,
Mr. President, glad to have this opportunity to speak. I will be brief. Our country needs a change in direction. That means we need new ideas, different policies and bold programs of action because humanity is about to be presented with gigantic, perhaps converging global challenges that are already visible on the far horizon and could soon be confronted by the human community, challenges that result directly from three distinctly human-driven activities. Rising per human consumption of scarce resources, rapidly increasing absolute human population numbers worlwide and unbridled expansion of the manmade global economy, when taken together, appear to be quickly approaching a point in human history at which time the relatively small, finite, noticeably frangible planetary home God blesses us to inhabit will no longer be able to sustain life as we know it or human existence.
Between now and some colossal ecologic or economic wreckage unregulated human consumption, production and propagation activities now overspreading Earth can be expected to precipitate the massive extirpation of biodiversity, the deleterious dissipation of natural resource, the irreversible degradation of the environment and the dangerous diminishment of the capacity of Earth to serve as a fit place for human habitation.
Mr. President, please, carefully consider immediately limiting the unrestrained growth of human consumption, production and propagation by placing a cap on per capita consumption, by stemming the tide of rampant big-business expansion, and by encouraging the family of humanity to adopt a “one child per family” policy?
Thank you, Mr. President, for hearing these proposals for necessary change from unchecked human activities that will shortly be seen as patently unsustainable to human activities that will be conducted in sustainable ways, ones consonant with the preservation of biodiversity, frangible ecosystem services and Earth’s body.
Sincerely,
Steve Salmony
John Feeney // December 21, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Ron,
Definitely. It’s the general public we really need to reach.
The scientific community is of course largely aware of what we’re facing, but the average citizen is not sufficiently exposed to the necessary information to be well informed. My experience is that a majority of people still barely know what “peak oil” is and have heard nothing of the “sixth extinction.”
Things would change, I think, if these things were much more visible in the media. Dave is making a fantastic contribution in that regard.
growthbuster // December 21, 2007 at 5:38 pm
Thanks so much, John, for the important work you do, and for helping me get the word out. I really need to build a massive network of enlightened folks to help both with funding and with screenings once this is complete.
I had lunch today with a friend who is a very successful businessman, and who happened to be chair of our local economic development corporation at one time. Once the conversation turned to my documentary, you would have thought he was speaking Greek and I was speaking English! His vocabulary, the word combinations (such as “growth” and “vital”), and his inability to recognize the circles and fuzziness of his logic, reinforced for me the urgent need to counterbalance the pro-growth rhetoric that is smothering the public. I have my work cut out for me, but I think film/video is the perfect medium to illustrate concepts that growth boosters just can’t get.
I believe I have a way of reaching folks like my friend, who have been drinking the kool-ade for too long. Thanks, all for your support. I need it!
Dave Gardner
Producer/Director
Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity
http://www.growthbusters.com
Steven Earl Salmony // December 21, 2007 at 7:10 pm
Keep going, Dave, and thanks for your efforts.
Sincerely,
Steve
Emmett Duffy // December 21, 2007 at 7:44 pm
This is one of the most refreshing things I’ve seen for some time. Kudos to you, Dave, and to John for helping get the word out. Can’t wait to see the movie!
Steven Earl Salmony // December 22, 2007 at 6:59 am
The planet we inhabit is a self-regulating, self-sustaining and self-renewing home, one that has worked well for millions of years. Our ancestors lived here as hunter-gatherers. Presumably, their numbers fluctuated in cyclical manner, based upon food availability. In early times more obtainable food gave rise to more people and the lack of food to less people.
Green plants are at the base of the food chain. The plants are consumed by other life. In turn, other forms of life eat those creatures. Consumers of one species are consumed by other species. In the natural order of all living things, food populations and feeder populations oscillate in equilibrium; they control one another. As food increases, the feeder population increases. A point is reached when feeder population increases result in a decline in the amount of available food. Then, as the food supply decreases, feeder numbers stop growing. As the feeder population declines, the food population increases. This is a negative feedback loop. An example of it is something with which we are familiar, a thermostat. This instrument maintains the temperature in our homes by means of switching off the furnace when the temperature gets too hot and switching it on when the temperature becomes too cold. In a negative feedback loop a point is reached at which extreme changes in temperature are halted. That is to say, the temperature of the house is maintained within limits. The house cannot get too hot or too cold because the thermostat arrests excessive changes in temperature.
Several thousand years ago humankind unknowingly shut off nature’s ‘thermostat’ that controls extreme changes in human population numbers. At that point we shifted from hunting and gathering food to growing and storing it in amounts that were greater than what was needed for immediate survival. A culture shift from foraging to producing food occurred. More food gave rise to more people, who produced more food, which gave rise to more people, who produced more food, which gave rise to more people, and so forth. Soon the increasing human numbers led to the perception that the production of more food was necessary to feed more people. The increasing food supply and increasing absolute human numbers were continuously accelerating in a food-population spiral. This is a positive feedback loop. The ‘thermostat’ to regulate the relationship between food and feeder populations with regard to the human community was rendered inoperative by the developing capability to increase food production at will, and seemingly without limits. Scientists have observed that the production of food to feed a growing population, as has occurred thoughtout human history in our culture, results in an even larger population size of the human species.
Agriculture gave rise to the culture shift from hunter-gatherer to food producer and provided the very foundation for an economic system that depends upon the relentless increase of capabilities production, come what may. The continuous economic expansion we see today follows a course established at the dawn of our culture and may be about to reach a point in human history when human numbers and unbridled production could overwhelm the Earth. The longstanding cultural preference for continously increasing production appears to be a primary basis for the human population explosion.
Since increasing the amount of obtainable food gives rise to increasing human numbers, that there are options becomes clear. Certainly, one choice is another culture shift. The earlier shift was to continually increase food production. In discerning that a culture shift is necessary in our time, leading to the stabilization of production, we could conceivably take a giant step toward addressing the looming global challenges posed by human overpopulation and human over-consumption. Evolutionary change is the way of all life; so, too, do the thought and behavior of beings in a human culture evolve.
We humans appear to have an artificial, inflated view of ourselves due to commonly held beliefs in illusory cultural transmissions about the placement of humanity in the natural order of all living things. Cultural transmissions abound about the grandeur of the individual, while silence persists about the reality of human beings as one among many wondrous creatures to inhabit a small, finite, frangible planet. Although we recognize ourselves as members of a species, we have little appreciation of human creatureliness. Whatever else we may say about ourselves, we can assuredly note that humankind is an organism that evolved within the biological community. And, according to the emerging research, humanity’s population dynamics is common to, not different from, the population dynamics of other organisms. Humankind could be the most complex and miraculous species ever to live in this place in the solar system. Even so, humanity remains an integral part of nature, not apart from it, and in so many ways, humans are like the marvelous creatures that surround us in our earthly home.
Based upon a culturally shifted view of human beings as one of many creatures, the stabilization of unbridled human production capabilities would be seen as a path to a future marked by human wellbeing, environmental health and sustainability.
In the light of history, humanity is transparently seen as capable of a cultural shift in thought and behavior. This shift in certain of our values and lifestyle could save many familiar creatures from being extirpated, preserve limited resources from being recklessly dissipated, and protect global ecosystems. As an example, humankind needs to recognize the sufficiency of current levels of global harvests to feed people in the world. To longer follow an obsolete course of continuous, seemingly endless economic expansion will result in further biodiversity loss, even greater degradation of the environment and, perhaps, the irreversible destruction of the planet as a fit place for human habitation.
Consider this proposal: We change thought and behavior so that Earth is preserved as viable for habitation, humanity is protected from the potential danger of extinction, and biodiversity is hopefully saved from the same but more imminent fate. We either stay the current ‘business as usual’ course by continually increasing production, thereby allowing economic globalization to commandeer habitats, expunge biodiversity and engulf the planet, or we stabilize production, a remedy that is consonant with the preservation and nurturance of human and other life on our fragile yet resilient planet.
The explosion of human population worldwide is a huge challenge; but we can take the measure of it and solve the problem.
The Goose // December 22, 2007 at 7:07 am
I am very grateful for the work that you and Dave Gardner are doing. Dave and I are both on a population discussion list hosted by the Rocky Mountain Sierra Club. However, I really didn’t make the connection of who he was or his work until I read a promo about his movie on a friend’s website (thestumblingblock.com). I will do what I can to promote the movie here in Georgia. By summer, the metro Atlanta area will probably run out of water, which is the most wonderful thing that could ever happen. And frankly, for the record, I would like to state that I’m really disappointed with humans. We claim to be intelligent and technologically advanced, but all we do is breed to the limits of our natural resources and then crash, just like any other species. In metro Atlanta, the total incompetence of local governments is finally what is stopping the Growth War Machine, even though the machine USED government to mercilessly rape and plunder north Georgia for 30 years. No one really likes to think or plan ahead — everyone just likes to make ALL the money they can NOW without any regard for the future. Developers are locusts — nothing more.
Magne Karlsen // December 22, 2007 at 4:59 pm
http://www1.nrk.no/nett-tv/klipp/241105
An awsome documentary in four parts, about humanity’s destabilization and destruction of the various ecosystems of this world. I have posted this link somewhere else here, I know, but hey: a good thing can’t be repeated too often, they say.
Magne Karlsen // December 22, 2007 at 5:41 pm
The Goose: “No one really likes to think or plan ahead — everyone just likes to make ALL the money they can NOW without any regard for the future.”
That’s right. — And especially so nowadays, when all good science keeps leaving its audience of helpless consumers with the impression that that the future really isn’t a good place to be, but in reality a fucking pity and a waste. So if you want to make it, you’ve got to make it quick!! It’s now or never.
Okay, so this is not my way of thinking. When I take a quick look around at what is happening in this world, in real life, in a lifestyle magazine or on the nearest television screen, it’s what I’ve got every reason to think the vast majority of other people must be thinking.
Question: How many whistleblowers will have to step forward before the people who control this sorry excuse for a civilization decides to actually give peace a chance? For a change? Oh yes: this is a very naïve thing to say. As a matter of fact, rather childish. And I know that the controlling powers of big business corporations, banks, insurance companies, universities, hospitals, criminal organizations, armies, religious sects and local, regional and national policymaking communities just can’t understand this kind of logic! Many of them can’t even bring themselves to think about a reality of not having fresh blood dripping from their loyal servants’ hands. Such a situation would not be natural to them. Of course I must agree with anyone who tells me that Peace In Our Times is an absolutely impossible utopy. But I retort: If humanity wants to become able to do make some changes to the way we are treating the ecosystems of this planet, for real, we simply can’t do without it.
Peace in our times is a bleedin’ necessity. Take it or live it. From me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb2YSAVHmIE
Happy Christmas.
John Feeney // December 22, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Yes, and viva la revolución!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87yq372R4Ts
Magne Karlsen // December 23, 2007 at 8:00 am
Probably not your kind of music, but hey? Call it Country&Western, if you like.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=w9FHbP2-of8
Don’t forget.
Nucbuddy // December 26, 2007 at 7:07 am
Why do you believe energy will imminently peak?
John Feeney // December 26, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Hi Nucbuddy,
I wouldn’t use the word “imminent” with regard to peak energy. Peak oil, yes, but energy, no.
Excluding a few oil industry holdouts, I suppose, the consensus among those who study oil depletion seems to be that oil’s peak is here or imminent. Natural gas has peaked in the US and may be not too far behind oil globally.
That said, in the instance above, I used the term “peak energy” a bit losely, in the manner described here. But there are some who do expect a more general peaking of energy not too many decades from now. Here, Paul Chefurka’s model has it occurring around 2020.
Nucbuddy // December 26, 2007 at 4:23 pm
OK. I apologize for placing a word in your mouth.
Speaking of a more general peaking of energy not too many decades from now, that would seem to be unlikely in light of our current possession of 200 trillion tons — some half-trillion years worth at current fission-electricity production rates — of fissionable heavy-metal. No?
John Feeney // December 26, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Nucbuddy,
As I said, “there are some who expect a more general peaking of energy not too many decades from now.” And many of those folks study energy issues in great depth and much more than I. But as I said, I used the term in the article in the first manner to which I linked. While I could offer a couple of thoughts which run counter to your optimistic thought on the subject, since it’s not an area on which I focus heavily, my suggestion would be that you go to one of the peak oil sites listed in the sidebar here and ask them. That way you’ll get more than my second hand reporting. (The Oil Drum, Paul Chefurka’s site, and others include comments and discussion.)
Nucbuddy // December 26, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Every single one of the conclusions you draw on this site is ultimately based upon energy running out. On the About GIM page, it says that this site “addresses the most urgent challenge facing human society today: our need to confront the continued irrational push for unending growth on a finite earth.” In the face of a half-trillion years worth of fuel, the very “urgent challenge” that provides the sole pretext for this site, becomes merely a distant complaint.
[Response: Oops, I think you're misreading the point of the site. I'm quite against continuing such growth. The challenge is to come to grips that with the fact that such growth is destructive, not to find a way to continue it. This site emphasizes population growth and economic growth. Reliance on fossil energy is included as a concern but not a central focus on the site. There are other sites specializing in that.]
Those sites are all heavily-barricaded religious cults. A scant amount of basic arithmetic shows the peak-uranium-in-50-years claims of the cult-leaders to be off by many billions of years. Scientists show up all the time at those sites and show them in easy-to-understand terms how their cult pretexts are incontrovertibly flawed. They are shouted-down by the glassy-eyed throngs.
[Response: Well, scientists' work is presented on those sites as well. As you said, scientists show up all the time.
And there are certainly energy experts who support the most prevalent views on those sites. Go there and discuss it. Barricaded? I've debated issues on The Oil Drum, with people disagreeing strongly with one another and presenting a wide range of views. Many regulars there are very optimistic about future energy availability.]
One might as well go to Jonestown or Jesus Camp, bearing news and perspective from the outside world. Those folks live for peak energy. Take away that secure constant, and their lives would be shattered.
[Response: Oh, I think some of them get out of the doomer house from time to time. And I've seen a number of regulars on TOD who see things much as you do. -- JF]
Steven Earl Salmony // December 27, 2007 at 8:20 am
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007704.html
Please check out the blog found at the link above. Comments there, or here, are welcome.
Sincerely,
Steve
Magne Karlsen // December 27, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Dear Nuckbuddy.
http://trinifar.wordpress.com/2007/12/21/learning-to-think-about-the-future/
I think this link is going to give you a fair idea of what the regular users of the GIM blog believes it is all about. The general message is written there; in fact the headline says it all: “Learning to Think About the Future.”
Well, anyway: this is my personal impression of what is going on here. Apart from those very few individuals who sometimes feel like jumping in here in order to ridiculing the general message here with a comment or two and then disappear from the comments section indefinately, what I think everybody here is sharing, is a fascination with all the PROBLEMS the natural sciences are making us increasingly aware of, in terms of what the living conditions of this planet might be like, some twenty, thirty and/or fifty years from now. The general impression of what might be waiting for us to cope with “over there” — in the future — is, undoubtedly, rather grim. We are discussing a future which — at best — will involve a population total of more than 8.5 billion people in the year 2050, and most probably even more. We are all discussing a future here, in which unfortunate developments like global warming and manmade climate change should be forcing a substantial global CO2 emissions reduction upon us, simply because it is going to be needed. Humanity as a whole must found a new balance between human activities and ecological limits and needs. To the very least, this is what all the regular users of the GIM blog (and a lot of other blogs; no doubt) has come to understand.
If you do not agree about that, well then: post a comment about it, and be aware of the fact that somewhere in the comments section of this blog, Mr. Feeney has allowed a commenter to send “all nice guys” to the graveyard. This is to imply that Mr. Feeney here is a gambler, and probably very used to high stakes, long shots and bad odds.
Ha ha.
This blog is all about trying to figure out both what the future will definitely hold, and what it MIGHT hold, assuming that humankind can actually make a u-turn here, and get ready for a change of direction. This is where the social and humanistic sciences (sociology, anthropology, history, psychology, philosophy, religion) and moral/ethical topics, subjects and issues has a way of coming into play.*
This blog is about what the future will definitely hold, no matter what we might find it opportuned to do, for better or worse. It will definitely hold a problem concerned with a change of directions as the oil resources are slowly but steadily drying up. Because we just have to admit that the world civilization of the present is “addicted to oil”, as George W. Bush himself famously said. And we shall have to admit that a future society without oil is very, very difficult to imagine. There was a guest essay on the subject here some time: “My World Without Oil”; a very intriguing piece by Jim Lydecker, I believe. My memory may fail me here, never mind.
This blog is all about a philosophical view that is shared by most of the regular users; namely that there must — now, logically speaking — be a limit to growth.
And, finally, this blog is all about a shared fear for a future in which no changes were possible to achieve. I do not think that great many of the regular users here are fearing that the end of the world is upon us. But I think most of us has come to understand that children’s children may be walking around on a desert planet with a higher sea limit, in which there is not much wildlife left, as humanity has overgrown the earth’s carrying capacity in terms of the variety of its different life-forms.
Unless we should all make the collective decision to fascilitate for a change of directions here, I shall have to believe that tropical deforestation will be widespread. I believe desertification shall have to continue, in all directions, north, south, east and west. I believe overfishing is going to be a disastrous development, affecting the oceans of course, but also humanity, as fish remains one of our prime sources of non-vegetable nutrients.
- —
* I know, fully well, that I am probably the most radical of all the regular users of the GIM blog. I am certainly among those here who are the most “spiritually” inclined. I believe the answer to the question of our common future is, first of all, a very complex matter. I believe all social sciences should stake a claim for a place inside this vexing dilemma of ours: HOW ARE WE, AS A SPECIES, GOING TO MEET UP WITH THE CHALLENGES THAT NATURE ITSELF PUTS UP FOR US TO HANDLE?
Especially so long as such a depressing lot of the issues that we are discussing here are bordering on quite natural taboo topics. I mean: the idea of not giving birth to as many children as you like. — Like: “In God’s name, Sir! What the fucking hell are you talking about?!”
Well, in my opinion God made an error when the human female was allowed to give birth to fifteen children in a lifetime; and well, I wonder: “What the fucking hell was The Creator thinking?”
Ha ha.
Magne Karlsen // December 27, 2007 at 2:31 pm
One more thing.
This blog, especially as seen in context with a few of the blogs in the blog roll, can be understood as a worst case scenario, in terms of what the future has in store for us. I can’t bring myself to feel too sorry about that, as I believe the human race has an obligation to think and be conscious about its role in the future of this limited ecosystem which is this planet, — The Earth.
From the top of the food chain, where we are sat, we are the creators of our own future, as well as that of other lifeforms. From a perspective such as this — as coupled with a growing number of scientific reports on the future of this planet — an oval sphere of ecosystems that are connected to each other in myriads of different ways — there can be no doubt that worst case scenarios has its crucial role to play. — Knowing what we’re all up against can’t be too bad.
And I mean: do not blame it on me or any other internet dillettante: the notion that we’re all up against “a window of opportunity” of ten years or less, is Al Gore and IPCC’s idea, and not mine. I do agree with these hotshots of world politics and climate science, but I’m not one of them. It’s now or never, I guess — and it involves all of the human race; not only the rich, the famous and the politically well-placed.
Now that’s a challenge, too. I mean: it’s obvious to me that we’re talking about social movements here. They will be needed.
Magne Karlsen // December 27, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Thinking things through here. Second thoughts or something.
This blog is, among so many other things, a place where honesty rules. And yes: I have on several occasions allowed myself to air abominable facts like the one I made just now: that in the light of the human reproductive prowess and that there must quite logically be a limitation to the number of humans that this planet can support.
A blasphemic way of reasoning, huh?!
My case against The Creator remains as fresh as it has always been: Why, oh why, did “He” make allowance for the human species to overwhelm this planet’s various ecosystems because of such a thing as a population explosion, which can be mathematically explained and has its base in the bare fact that every husband and wife, girlfriend and boyfriend of this world have the opportunity available to them, to give birth to a football team of children, as a matter of free will.
In this over-industrialized age, we’re all cursed with the population explosion. It is the natural outcome of the human female’s ability to give birth to more than two children in a lifetime, and this is the hardest of all possible facts. It’s the mathematics of exponential growth, that’s all, and noone can simply decide to do away with mathematic facts. It is humanly possible to make the claim that overpopulation has nothing to do with the degradation of the ecosystems of this world, but that is also all that anyone can do.
Heavily polluting human practices coupled with the basic fact of population explosion constitute a root cause of the environmental degradation of all possible forms. This is something that I know, and not just something I believe or think.
You can’t quarrel with a piece of math?!
Maybe God, in creating us with the opportunity to make big families, simply didn’t contemplate the possibility of an industrial revolution? As all forms of polluting practices run contrary to all forms of Godly wisdom? In which case the tribal people’s case against the white man remains as relevant as it’s always been.
- —
http://www.care2.com/c2c/groups/disc.html?gpp=8377&pst=539436&archival=&posts=1
“Our world is in terrible shape again even though the Great Spirit gave us different languages and sent us to the four corners of the world and told us to take care of the Earth and all that is in it.
This Hopi ceremonial rattle represents Mother Earth. The line running around it is a time line and indicates that we are in the final days of the prophecy. What have you as individuals, as nations and as the world body been doing to take care of this Earth? In the Earth today, humans poison their own food, water and air with pollution. Many of us including children are left to starve. Many wars are still being fought. Greed and concern for material things is a common disease.”
- —
http://www.hopiland.net/prophecy/
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher // December 27, 2007 at 7:05 pm
John et al-
Don’t take me wrong. I like everyone here. I have no animosity to express or impress, even if I often couch my approach thus. I am not an academic. I would sooner be in a bar fighting drunken sailors for the fun of it, but though I love life, I have gotten too old for any of that.
So, when I see a group as this is, so very close, and yet still mired in the muck of empirical barbarity, I shudder. I have seen it all before.
And I now just roll up my sleeves anyway, and wade into the crowd looking for a chin or an eye to land one upon for the blood and awaiting the flashing stars of unconscious enlightment to appear.
We are ever so close to Paradise, we fools.
But it will not come simply addressing the environment, or growth, or overpopulation, or governments run afoul of truth with war and progress. We could grab all these culprits and cold-cock every one and still not get to the root of the problem.
Those of you who have read my previous posts here will recognize where I am going with this.
The really dangerous culprits are the devotional zealots who pray at the alter of the empirical sciences. It is so very difficult to get through to anyone and impress into anyone’s head, that science is a religion akin to witchcraft or Voodoo.
We live in an era polluted by empircal barbarity.
It will end one way or the other. This is a closed system. And it is about to bust its seams.
I have painstakenly proved it philosophically, but today’s intellects cannot generally read more than few pages at a time before they are distracted into looking at a YouTube video of Britney or a cat doing back flips.
Within virtually every branch of empirical science there are bombs and booby traps that will either bring the human world too its knees or its literal end.
If it does, we will avoid Paradise altogether.
And some still await the empirical messiah. Some think they have even found some here among the environmentalists.
Others thought similarly that the Humanitarians were the empirical messiah, and the Libertarians, the Marxists, the computer technologists and others too, all false empirical messiahs.
There are no empirical messiahs coming into this world, ever.
No. The environmentalists too are scientists, and they currently toil day and night like the devils they are perfecting an empirical knowledge set that could and would provide the insight with which some fool will then build the device that will wipe out the planet or the species or both.
No…
Empirical science without morality as a constant and absolute constraint is immoral.
It is witchcraft.
The moral imperative of life is to live a life that detracts not at all from the lives available to those who will follow us into this world.
When we gamble where the wager is the future, or even a small debasement of the future, we cumulatively destroy the future of humanity.
This is an easy observational deduction, one that would be made easier were we immortal observers.
We are not immortal. But the destruction we level against the future, it can immortal.
And sometimes that destruction is given to the future in the form of a knowledge set.
Unfettered empirical investgation of our surroundings is immoral.
Knowledge is power. But it generally is only the power to destroy.
My best-
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher
Trinifar // December 28, 2007 at 2:49 am
Don,
I actually read most of your (long) essay The New Epistemology of Morality and Truth. GIM isn’t the place to discuss it, so I just want to say it’s clear you have some real insight and some skill with evocative exposition. I sincerely wish you would make an effort to express yourself here on GIM in a less self-absorbed way. For example:
“mired in the muck of empirical barbarity” may work in the context of your essay, but outside of it, it’s just meaningless.
And no one who hasn’t read and digested your piece will find this meaningful:
“The really dangerous culprits are the devotional zealots who pray at the alter of the empirical sciences. “
How could they possibly know that by “empirical sciences” you mean what most of us consider science as well as economics, politics, engineering, public health professions, and most every other aspect of human endeavor, and that “devotional zealots” is a reference to pretty much everyone? Using your own personal language on GIM is just a non-starter if communicating something meaningful is your goal.
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher // December 28, 2007 at 6:01 am
Trinifar-
Thank you for your frank assessment of my work. I shall forever contemplate your insight, “I actually read most of your (long) essay The New Epistemology of Morality and Truth. GIM isn’t the place to discuss it […}”
You are right. Thank you for pointing out how embarrassingly I have acted here. My entirely irrelevant and obviously self-obsessive views are clealry not worth reading through to the end. You should likely stop, here.
Nothing I might have discovered in my life has any relevance outside the scope of such a petty and petulant work as mine is.
I am clearly out of my league here, as likely anywhere in among enlightened humanity where I come out of the dark woods to rub shoulders with real knowledge I can barely appreciate it is so bright and brilliant and harms my eyes to look directly at it, but especially here among those who would take of their kindly generous and precious time to apprise me that I am disturbing their much more meaningful efforts, and who have succinctly asked me to either correct my ways or butt out.
GIM is a place where the affectionados of environmentalist movement can exercise their blogophile inhibitions and exhibitions, and not any place where a mere philosopher’s truth or a path toward truth might somehow be appreciated.
So I have wasted my time looking the fool, and apparently embarrassing myself repeatedly? I shall correct my now obvious mistake.
If I may be so impertinent as the enlightened say is my wont, may I add one final note and get it past the censor who keeps everything on the up and up here, and who was so generous as to allow your dissing blurb to appear, even off topic as it was beginning with an unsolicited critique of a book I am still slowly writing.
I have apparently not met the collaborative needs of this able group, nor have I remained focused on the science and political machinations of those whose consciouness has been raised to a level capable of understanding Growth is Madness.
With my exiting words I will try to use common English, and not just some other language I have made up simply to amuse myself.
I shall try with these words, but none should feel obligated to take any measure of whether I deserve to disrupt the group here one more time, as I clearly do not deserve any such consideration. I do not fit the mold. And apparently everyone else here gets along and will likely get along better without my thoughts.
To me it looks a conspiracy of action, and nothing one should comment upon, especially as it has now come to the point of making a propaganda movie.
So know then, censor, I will not bother to return to see if it shall be so. The choice is left to you as the censor alone unhindered by any cordiality for which I will be entirely oblivious.
But I will nonetheless make the attempt to add one last note from out here in the never-never land of my mental aberrations wherein I clearly and seemingly effortlessly come up with so many communication non-starters…
Without the desire and ability to perceive the relationship of one’s own beliefs and practices, what these would teach and impress by their example upon others, with the common and easily observable reality of an ever increasing negative effect upon humanity and humanity’s chances in the future, and, by simply repeating every mistake made in the past from a slightly, very slightly, different vantage point, (environmentalism), and with what are obviously ever greater empirical tools, empirical disasters that will snuff out or cull humanity are entirely unavoidable.
In fact, many now actively negotiate cause to affect these out of spite and righteousness.
When they happen, the blame for same can be readily placed at the feet of the very people who made their views so trendy by wailing about what annoyed them, those who created more science with which to affect them, and those who refused to acknowledge the root cause when it was drawn to their attention..
I have done enough here. I don’t enjoy getting down in the gutter when I can see no results for my efforts. I have given it enough effort to point out the source of all these problems to everyone’s attention here.
I’ll be off now to make a post on the Miss America Pageant site, that is, if they’re not so erudite as to show me the exit too.
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher
Steven Earl Salmony // December 28, 2007 at 1:32 pm
Don,
You are not being shown the exit, either now or at an earlier time. At least to me, you appear to misunderstand what could be viewed as helpful comments from Trinifar above, and from John several weeks ago.
I find the work at hand exceedingly difficult. People here are trying to help one another, I suppose, to share an adequate enough understanding of how human beings “fit” in the natural order of living things as well as to gain a more realistically grasp of the way the world we inhabit actually works.
In the light of good biological and physical science, we also contemplate what can be reasonably and sensibly done to address and overcome the multifaceted, distinctly human-driven predicament that presents itself to humanity in our time.
Your contributions to these discussions have been and continue to be worthy of consideration……… the way you express yourself notwithstanding.
Sincerely,
Steve
growthbuster // December 29, 2007 at 8:11 am
Well! I must confess that I sometimes fail to get back here often enough to read every single post on every thread, so this is the first time I’ve seen “The American Philosopher’s” writing. My hope for my own efforts (remember? I’m making a film) is that I avoid being dismissed as a nutcase while delivering a very uncomfortable message in a bold way. I have the same hope for John Feeney and friends here.
Reading Don’s last post definitely serves as a role model to avoid. It left me with the impression of a lone malcontent, naked at the computer at 3 a.m., tilting at windmills and so obsessed with an idea that any disagreement or suggestion is a lost opportunity - setting him off on a tirade instead of serving as an opportunity to enlight. I don’t mean this vision as a disparagement of “The American Philosopher,” but more as a general mode I know we all want to avoid. I think we’re doing a heck of a job, so far, but I also expect many growth-boosters see us in the same light. Can we avoid that? Maybe not. Even Don labeled us as zealots. We can try, and not by moderating our facts and opinions, but just by avoiding getting down in the dirt when our feelings are hurt. I commend John and everyone else who regularly contributes for taking the high road!
Lastly, under the heading of self-promotion, I really need your help to complete and distribute my “propaganda film.” If you’re reading this then you should be a member of my growing network of supporters. Please visit http://www.growthbusters.com/ and subscribe to my email list as a fan, advisor, or supporter who will pass on our messages to other groups. If you have suggestions, resources to bring to my attention, etc., I will be grateful.
Thanks, again, John and group, for your support on this.
Dave Gardner
Producer/Director
Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity
http://www.growthbusters.com
Magne Karlsen // December 29, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Dave: “My hope for my own efforts (remember? I’m making a film) is that I avoid being dismissed as a nutcase while delivering a very uncomfortable message in a bold way.”
Hm. Well said. And I mean: haven’t we all felt the same? Aren’t we all (to a certain degree, at least) constantly marked by this sentiment? — To the best of my knowledge, Dave, you are the first environmentalist writer (film-maker) to make a statement like this, straight out.
So kudos to you!
About your film project. I hope you’ve taken your time watching the documentary series I linked you to above. It’s just fabulous. All in all, it doesn’t leave any doubt behind. What is upon us now, in terms of the degradation of the world’s biosphere, is a strictly human driven ecological mishap. — This ultramodern and sophisticated humans civilization of ours is about to make a complete mess of absolutely everything, and this is the general impression you’ll be left with after watching all four episodes. The message is, as you put it, uncomfortable indeed.
Watching this series will most certainly serve as encouragement to you on your work.
You may need that.
Trinifar // December 29, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Don,
What I meant by saying I read “most” of your essay was that I skimmed the parts that I was familiar with and concentrated on what seemed to be your original contribution. I did read to the end. I happen to have read the major Western philosophers (was in fact hung up on them for some time, especially Kant who you cite repeatedly), and I’m familiar with Twain (who I think was a great if not scholarly philosopher), so I didn’t see the need to read every word you wrote.
I am sincere when saying I think you have a lot of insight and am saddened that your style of communication makes it inaccessible (or just plain off-putting) to most people. Your central point — “The moral imperative of life is to live a life that detracts not at all from the lives available to those who will follow us into this world” — is well worth attending to. What’s off-putting is “I have discovered Categorical Knowledge, that knowledge that is true in every instant without any exception.” Sorry, something like that has been said by too many people to have any affect other than pushing serious readers away. It indicates of a lack of understanding of other people (past and present) and epistemology in general.
I thought that someone who wrote with such courage and assurance would not be offended by me responding in kind. I hope you continue your work. If you want more detailed feedback, email me.
Trinifar // December 29, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Dave,
Yeah, well, me too!
A few things I try to keep in mind:
1) stick to the facts
2) don’t demonize anyone or any viewpoint
3) remember that most people haven’t really thought about these issues in any depth
4) myriad views on overpopulation
I envy your ability to work with film/video. Being able to show animations of time-series data is a huge benefit (e.g. population pyramids over time). So is showing interviews with some of the people that John lists as being in your film. When your audience sees that these are normal, sincere, articulate people who talk in complete sentences and don’t appear all that different than anyone else, it lends more credence to what they have to say. (That is, it’s much harder to paint them as nutjobs than just reading their printed words.)
Best of luck with your project and I’m happy to help in any way I can. I’ve signed up on your website.
John Feeney // December 29, 2007 at 11:20 pm
I’ve been busy catching up on email and other things, so my apologies for being a little absent here the past few days.
Magne,
Thanks for jumping in to eplain GIM to Nucbuddy. He came over here from the very long back-and-forth I was involved in on Grist:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/12/17/18180/853
It appears he’s a nuclear booster, something with which I have no major problem. But I guess he didn’t quite get the point of GIM. That is, unless he thinks our ecological problems are caused entirely by the burning of fossil fuels. I wish it were so. Then this dilemma we’re in would be much more manageable. As it is, I’ve become increasingly convinced fossil fuel use is just one piece of the puzzle.
John Feeney // December 29, 2007 at 11:55 pm
Don,
Your comment…
… is almost indistinguishable from my own view. ( I would want to make sure “those who will follow include other species.)
I also agree with you that,
However, my investigation of our ecological challenges convinces me that we have mere decades, at most, to do something decisive to prevent extremely serious worldwide consequences resulting from our past disregard for the earth.
While I fully support any efforts to get at the cultural and philosophical roots of our ecological problems, I don’t think that will happen fast enough to lead to the major overt actions necessary to avert tragic consequences.
So that is why I tend to focus mostly on the levels of population, economic growth, etc. I do so in the hope that we can do something about those things, that way buying ourselves enough time to “fix” the underlying problems with world view and, sure, perhaps morality as well, which got us into this mess.
And I guess my agreement with this…
…does mean I’m pushing a certain moral view, eh?
Magne Karlsen // December 30, 2007 at 1:40 am
John: “Thanks for jumping in to explain GIM to Nucbuddy.”
Well, as I said: what I provided was my personal impression of what is going on here. I don’t think I’m too far off the mark? Anyway: let me tell you that explaining the true meaning of this blog to another person was interesting, even to myself.
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher // December 30, 2007 at 6:25 am
I have little patience with a group such as this, but not for any personal animosity here. I am not easily offended. I am easily disgusted with commonplace ignorance though, especially among those whose parents spent so much to educate them.
I’ve got a third grade education.
With all that high falutin education, anyone could sit back and take pot shots. I’ve heard it all elswhere, and will again. It mostly comes from anonymous slackards.
Anyone can sit back and say, Oh! I agree with this, or that… You don’t have a clue John Feeney, and we’ll get on to that right here and now. This is not a T/F test. You have to think through the answers to comprehend what’s going on.
But first, I think you are all a bunch of moral cowards. You can’t take the truth. So, you all deny it. You assert as your base assumption almost matter of factly that morality is relative and worthless for understanding anything. It goes with the territory of your fat, vile American ethnicity, so says The American Philosopher as he breaks wind in both directions at the same time. That’s the truth! Are you listening to me yet?
So Mr Feeney, you agree with The Moral Impertaive of Life? Congratulations.
Now let me tell you what it means. Yes. Let ME tell you what it means.
The moral imperative of life is to live a life that detracts not at all from the lives available to those who will follow us into this world
John, EVERYONE agrees with The Moral Imperative of Life, on a quick reading of it.
But in the same post you say,
“However, my investigation of our ecological challenges convinces me that we have mere decades, at most, to do something decisive to prevent extremely serious worldwide consequences resulting from our past disregard for the earth.
While I fully support any efforts to get at the cultural and philosophical roots of our ecological problems, I don’t think that will happen fast enough to lead to the major overt actions necessary to avert tragic consequences.”
What is that drivel? Relatively? What, you agree with The Moral Imperative of Life, but it is only one of the many books on your shelf that you read so long ago you don’t remember what is in any of them?
So in your forgetfulness I guess you would justify stepping over the moral constraints of The Moral Imperative of Life because you’re smart enough to prognosticate and step into a long line of other dimwitted prognosticators, so few who haven’t been entirely deluded?
But we’ll not go there. Too cheap a shot. You might even be right! So instead, let’s accept your dire need premise instead.
And then, let us go here instead: If the problem is so utterly dire, then why not REALLY address this problem and start a shooting movement like the ELFs?
I’ll bet in your secular humanist belief system this would be immoral, right?
YOU can have it both ways, I would assume is your marvelous deduction.
Well, John, I know you know what I’m talking about. I know you have a good mind. Everyone here has a fairly competent mind, or most of you do anyway, or I wouldn’t waste my time, again.
But still, the truth is, you are all part of the problem. You all shirk your moral responsibilities due to the biases you have been given from your upbringing, your foolish and entirely unsupported humanitarian sense.
If it is going to be that bad, shoot the bastards! Stand by the convictions of your priognostication and blow them all up suicide bomber style! Put on the vest of liberation, walk into their boardroom and click the Ruby Slippers together saying “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home!” and detonate yourself!
You are all American pigs, each one so busy destroying the planet with your own pollution, you have a lot of nerve calling yourselves, “environmentalists.” You ought instead to have at least a chance by calling yourselves opportunist-apologists, and movie makers too.
Call a spade a spade and a liar a liar, and a propagandist a propagandist. Propaganda only carries a negative connotation if you DO NOT believe the lies of ommision are justified by the ends.
You are all Existentialists, for you believe in nothing concretely and everything relatively.
No. YOU can have it you way. But I can have it my way too. Relativity is dead. And Categorical Knowledge is at its tombstone.
You all need to go back to school because you are empirical antiques. Matriculate this!
Show me how YOU can step over the line drawn by The Moral Imperative of Life and not by that act be immoral.
It cannot be done.
It is Categorical Knowledge in the most extreme and purest sense ever discovered.
Show me anything that surpasses it, and I’ll come down off my cloud and stop throwing lightning bolts at all of you as is my wont.
Now, Mr. Feeney, were you in an underground bunker in Iowa where the government keeps all the doomsday bombs, the ones that’ll kill all of us and all of the spotted owls too… And as you stood there with the hair creeping up the back of your neck, you suddenly realized the schmuck behind the console was about to insert his key and end it all for ever and forever.
What is your moral duty, Mr. Feeney? (I’ll afford you here with an hypothetical axe should you need it.)
That’ right. Kill the SOB, and anyone else who came into the room to accomplish what you prevented him from doing.
This is not the example one might want to pass on to the future for its homicidal nature, but it is a morally necessary act required by The Moral Imperative of Life. Do not mind all the blood and the gore. You did the right thing, Spike Lee.
Unfortunately, your notion that you are going to build and preach about an empirical knowledge set based upon environmental studies in order to save the world from environmental catastrophe does not meet this moral threshhold.
This approach is no different from any previous empirical approach, each of which throughout history has only served to make the crises worse, and existence more tenuous, less worthy, all of which of course requires more science to address these ever greater needs, which again of course makes the necessity for more science imperative… BUT NOT a moral imperative. Lest you have forgotten already:
The moral imperative of life is to live a life that detracts not at all from the lives available to those who will follow us into this world
Unfettered investigation into empirical science clearly violates The Moral Imperative of Life.
It violates The Moral Imperative of Life because unfettered investigation into the empirical sciences is a gamble where the wager is the future.
Who the Hell are you to wager the future?
I believe you have by your argument used the future to justify your stepping over the bounds of The Moral Imperative of Life.
Unfortunately, when you brush up against Categorical Knowledge, the end cannot justify the means. The categorical nature of categorical Knowledge will call your logical bluff every time and put you into the dog house forever and ever.
It’s a walloping notion, but, the empirical sciences are the most extreme expression of our barbarity, hence the expression derided here on this board, “empirical barbarity,” and humanitarianism is but the nauseating apologist for this approach.
To get out of the repetitive cycle of more pollution, more population, more debasement of the human existence, and more dangerous science, there is but one path.
And it is not called environmentalism.
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher
ps: As I know very few Americans can read these days, and of those few most will not do much more than skim philosophy, in order to impress the readers here of my sincerity and the firmness of my philosophic assertions, I provide you with the following pictures 1) to show you who I am, and 2) to show you a real comitment in this world. They are today 27 and 30.
http://www.geocities.com/donaldwrobertson/dadkitty1.jpeg
http://www.geocities.com/donaldwrobertson/oacalls.jpg
growthbuster // December 30, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Well, at least he is clothed! My suggestion: we all move on.
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher // December 30, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Yes. Don’t say the galoot didn’t try.
My best to everyone here.
I hope you find what you’re looking for before someone comes along and turns all your work into some sort of environmentalist WMD.
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher
John Feeney // December 30, 2007 at 9:38 pm
Magne,
No, not at all. There is a basic focus here but, beyond that, what the site is about is somewhat in the eye of the beholder, I think. And you behold it very well.
John Feeney // December 30, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Don,
(1) You might be surprised to know I do not attach a lot of status to an advanced degree. Many of the brightest people I’ve known are self taught, lacking college or other degrees. When I played poker professionally, my teacher (to the extent I had one) was a college dropout who had figured out the game as well as anyone in the world at that time. I’m almost completely self taught myself in the environmental sciences. I did study the scientific method in grad school, but otherwise, I’m on my own with this stuff.
The only reason I even use the “Ph.D.” publicly is because, for better or worse, we live in a society where that often triggers a little automatic acknowledgment, deserved or not, and can help me get my foot in the door for a fraction of a second sometimes — just long enough, on occasion, to make a difference. I have it, so might as well use it, but do not see it as a big deal, and admire more, perhaps, the person who has really learned a subject or how to think without the formal training.
(2) The problem with the ELF approach is that it just gets you thrown in jail and out of commission without having accomplished much. Many Earth First’ers (and no doubt ELF’ers) are in prison. Moreover, it doesn’t address root causes such as population and economic growth. Those are areas where direct action seems impotent.
(3) Even if you’re right about science (I do think you have a point, but am not committed to a particular view on that at this time.), I think it’s one of our best bets, for now, for prompting the actions we need to avert a rather dire situation not far down the road. If you have alternative actions which would do the trick, I’ll listen. But remember, I’m acting on the belief, based on a fair amount of study, that we have, at best, mere decades to bring about major, decisive actions and/or change in how humanity approaches its relationship with the earth.
(4) The reason your comments aren’t showing up immediately when y0u post them is that they’re getting stopped by the spam filter. It stops very long comments (as they’re a mark of certain commercial spammers [advertisers]). So it has stopped yours. But it also “learns” and has now, apparently, marked you as a spammer and so stopped even your last, brief comment. It will learn otherwise as I “de-spam” your comments, and if they remain fairly brief. Otherwise, it’s out of my hands. The spam filter is part of the centrally located software of WordPress.com. If you want a comment to show up in a timely way, you’ll need to be more succinct.
John Feeney // December 31, 2007 at 12:17 am
And a belated nod to The Goose. I will be following the situation in Atlanta with great interest.
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher // December 31, 2007 at 3:28 am
[Admin note: This comment was held in the spam filter for some hours before being posted. So, FWIW, Trinifar posted his comment below before seeing this one from Don. -- JF]
John-
I am aware your approach is pragmatic. I do not seem to be getting through to you in any meaningful way. As a student your comprehension in reading leaves something to be desired, as it seems to me I am talking to a brick wall sometimes.
Nonetheless, I’ll try again.
I honestly think that when any environmentalist is educating the public about the dangers inherent to this or that, like the extent of pollution represented by a substance like mercury, they actually are creating a greater danger and more damage.
A couple of illustrative stories:
When I was in fourth grade, 1960, a classmate, Jim Morris, brought into our class a bottle with ten pounds of mercury in it. His father made mercury switches for GM of Ford, possibly both, as I recall. Jim handed the bottle around and he also poured a large wad of it into his hands and rolled it around for all to see. The teacher, Mrs. Fremont (Walnut Lake Elementary School Bloomfield Hills, Michigan) merely marveled at the education being handed out that day. No one either knew of or suspected the danger.
Oh course, such an incidence likely polluted the entire school for a while, for surely Jim was not careful enough he didn’t spill a disasterous quantity of the substance wherever he had it out, (I remember seeing some of it scoot across the floor of Mrs. Fremont’s classroom). As we both know, mercury evaporates at room temperature and everyone in my class would have gotten a dangerous dosage of mercury over the coming months.
I recall Jim, who was odd, one day showing off for the girls with worms he had retrieved from the playground at recess. He was taking these out of his desk and eating them one by one to impress the girls. Jim also had an older brother who was born deaf. In retrospect I know this might possibly have been as a result of his family’s likely massive and relentless exposure to mercury.
But for environmentalists to make such a deal of mercury, they surely have caused the poisoning of tens of thousands if not tens of millions of people, this simply because of human nature and what some humans will do with knowledge.
It only takes one out of millions of food service workers to have the inclination to use the information about mercury, cadmium, chromium etc. supplied them by the environmental movement that these are horrid poisons, some of which that cause insanity and genetic defects to do the dirty deed and let loose on society.
You can bet it’s been done plenty of times too, and even more frequently since the environmental movement began shooting its mouth off about its knowledge of danger.
You can bet it’s being done today in most every state in the union. I was poisoned in 1982 (it was presumed by the doctors) and ended up spending a week in Massachusetts General Hospital quite near death.
Back to our topic though. Your unfettered pragmatism as an approach is immoral, simply because of the overwhelmingly massive complexity of reality.
We all think we’re competent enough, but then so did my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Fremont.
The factual dominoes of reality are stood on end, and, back to back, in every direction, everywhere around all of us. And whenever any of us moves, these are set off in a chain reaction we can neither anticipate nor stop.
If I could teach everyone here just that alone, it would be worth my efforts here. We are not competent to go about messing with the world like this. We must be moral beings and respect our place in the pre-existing scheme of things.
To thrash around pragmatically has the postential to cause great harm, whether you’re a well-meaning environmentalist just handing out the information willy-nilly, or whether you’re a ten year old kid like Jim Morris bringing in some neat, heavy, silvery, shiny liquid stuff for your classmates to see in a Show & Tell extravaganza-palooza as we had one day in 1960 with Jim’s mercury.
Still, I recognize no one likes to have shots fired at them as can be made when one out and out claims someone’s lifelong approach is immoral. This offense one feels however, does not make the situation any less true.
Humanity, educated humanity should simply be much more discriminating than is the bent of the unfettered pragmatism of empirical science. This educated view is necessary due to the overwhelming complexity of the world around us. No one, no matter how smart or educated they may become, will ever diminish one iota. There is an infinite complexity all around us, and that this cannot be dimished with a Ph.D. or a great fluttering and squawking bevy of Ph.D.s has been demonstrated ad nauseum.
It furthermore is entirely possible to build an entirely new knowledge set that is above science, and above pragmatism. That this knowledge set should be called Categorical Knowledge is merely a necessity by historical precedent, the history of philosophy, and out of deference to Kant and all those whose shoulders he stood upon..
That a Ph.D. would be so utterly non-comittal on the subject of morality when it is laid out so plain before him, on his site, where another as intellectually generous, yielding and well-meaning as I have been here, is an indication of our empirical barbarity and the negligible value of such an academic title as you hold.
I do not mean to demean you as a human being here, just to put your silly title into perspective.
You can rest assured, due to my age, those who I have known, a continuous education, and some of it learned the hard way, my own education surpasses anything represented by three letters.
And education generally, self taught or obtained in one of the many “you know you only used to get juiced in it” institutions where the professors want to copulate with everyone across our thrill-seeking nation full of drunks and drug addicts means little if those who come together to discuss a topic such as this can so readily discount what is so clearly a superior approach because they don’t like the approach of the one dishing out the lesson.
Everyone learns what each has the aptitude to learn has been my experience.
When teaching though, if it’s important, one has to consider the question, what will these students remember? Studies have shown human beings much more readily remember the shockingly unpleasant than the common and mundane. It’s commonly referred to as the spice in life.
So, if anyone here finds my approach disagreeable, so be it. I’ve come here not to win a popularity contest, nor to gain any notoriety, but to force others to learn what are some very difficult lessons before they head off to school with ten pounds of mercury in a bottle to show the other kids.
So John, given this article is about bringing to the masses through a made-for-viewing production about the horrors of environmental issues, you can come to the table and address the moral issues of what is going on here and in the environmental movement generally, you can ignore these questions because you are uncomfortable with these notions of morality and you feel thus insecure in this minor respect in your education and aptitude toward tackling these ideas, or, you can like everyone else here profess by your silence to the issue an ignorance and a lack of interest in the moral questions and continue on like the environmentlist worker-bee automaton I discovered when I first came to this site.
And while I know like so many students today, some of you must be coddled, you’ll not find that approach half as rewarding as actually digging in the dirt of reality every once in a while.
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher
Trinifar // December 31, 2007 at 4:54 am
Don,
As always, John is gentle and inclusive for which he will always have my admiration and respect.
Believe it or not, I’m also trying to be supportive of your point of view although my way is not so pleasant. Mostly, and I hesitate to say this because of the potential loss of status within my “tribe,” I’m probably more like you than I’m like the other people who hang out here. Philosophy has interested me since I was 14, or younger. Several times I’ve thought I’d discovered incredibly important knowledge that nobody else knew. Each time it turned out that lots of people knew my important stuff and I ended up looking like a nutcase. The problem lies in getting people in general to attend to it and communicating it in a way that people actually hear.
It might seem shocking or oh so disappointing to find out that most people think you are a nutcase because of the way you express yourself even though you have something quite meaningful to say. You can allocate that result to a deficiency in your audience or in your manner of exposition. That’s your choice.
The style of expression of my blog is the result of wanting to be heard winning out over being right. All I can do is encourage you to consider that.
John Feeney // December 31, 2007 at 1:08 pm
Don,
Above I wrote:
You didn’t respond to it.
I suggest it is you who is being immoral, in seeking to impede the efforts of those trying to raise awareness of the issues at hand, unless you can provide some plausible alternative method to save the lives of millions and possibly billions of people at risk in the next hundred years or so as a result of our having seriously overshot the carrying capacity of the earth for humans.
So what actions (or ending of actions, or…?) do you suggest? Perhaps you’d like to see a return to a “non-scientific” hunter-gatherer culture. That can be a legitimate point of view (though one aimed at adapting to rather than preventing a massive die-off, seen in this view as inevitable). But you’ve offered neither that nor anything else.
Also, I could shorten most of your very long comments to a paragraph or two with little lost. You express a desire that people remember what you say. Well, they mostly won’t read it to begin with if you don’t make it more concise. e.g., here’s your message in the comment above:
Environmentalism exposes people to dangerous information which they’ll misuse. An example is the revelation that mercury is poisonous. You can bet people have used that information to poison others. We can’t predict how people will use such information. We’re dealing with infinite complexity and can’t hope to make it safely manageable. There is another way (call it categorical knowledge) existing above the immorality of science and pragmatism. You must not ignore questions of morality.
You want people to read your stuff? Be succinct.
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher // December 31, 2007 at 3:25 pm
In answer to your question, the one you assert I have not answered, but I have, the answer is stop lying and inferring there is something anyone could call scientific competence. Too many people believe that lie. And a belief in that lie is exactly the first cause of all that environmentalism seeks to address.
If science has anything true to say, it is that scientists do not know, and cannot know what will happen if they attempt scientifically to make the problem go away. And further, that if they scientifically look at the history of applied science, and they then attempt to address the problem, they will do so having a certain knowledge they almost certainly will make the problem worse as well as create many other problems.
Succinct enough?
Now, as for your assertion:
“I suggest it is you who is being immoral, in seeking to impede the efforts of those trying to raise awareness [...]”
Au contraire. I am attempting to make scientists honest and to shut them up entirely. It should be a crime!
I would have them as well keep themselves from amassing and disseminating knowledge sets that we can know due to a history of recurrently and consistently doing exactly the same thing with historically demonstrative disasterous results, that in fact have given rise to the very problems you claim to earnestly be trying to ameliorate with your scientific approach.
No! Don’t you understand the word? Has your education abrogated any need to heed to it?
Again, your approach has consistently failed throughout history. The methodical pragmatism of empirical science has had a far worse effect upon humanity than any witchcraft and every other acknowledged and organized religion on the planet combined.
In fact, your empirical beliefs can be philosophically reduced very quickly to a mere religion when one contrasts the entirety of every empirical knowledge set possible, to the overwhelming vast complexity of reality.
Such a consciencious comparison will yield stark results that explain exactly why the utter insignificance of even the combined knowledge sets of every empirical study ever made or that ever could be made, are simply insufficient and guaranteed to be yield catastrophic results when applied to reality by humanity.
The implicit assertion of empirical science is that we should by trial and error be willing to ruin the world. BUT! We have done that already.
Enough is enough.
And furthermore, while it was not Albert Einstein who designed or built the A-bomb, John, he (were he still alive) like every other scientist has to acknowledge his moral guilt, and his moral mistake for even having unwittingly supplied an absolutely essential component of the knowledge set that led to the development and constructuion of literally tens of thousands of these bombs.
He, like any other scientist has no viable moral defense for his actions by stating he cannot control human nature.
We ALLl know enough about human nature to know how dangerous science is.
There is nothing amoral about giving a child a loaded gun to play with, or, the gun and the bullets separately either.
So again John, address for all of us here, take the moral bull by the horns or his nuts, and I ask everyone to come to Johns’s rescue too, about your own moral escapism in extolling the virtue of raising awareness within a population that is far less concerned about environmentalism than how to use every kind of knowledge for their own propitious schemes and devices.
For THAT is human nature.
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher
John Feeney // December 31, 2007 at 4:24 pm
Don,
No, you still haven’t answered the question. you haven’t shown us how your suggestion would enable us to avert the catastrophe which will result in this century from a “business as usual” approach.
I don’t think you appreciate the time urgency involved here.
First, I trust you’ve read this or understand what it’s talking about.
Then, if you’re also aware of ecological issues such as mass extinction and all the others you know we have only a very short time to find a way to avert huge problems.
So first, tell me how abandoning science would do that? We’d still have a growing global population. And would not industry still be humming along? (maybe not, depending on how you picture this) Please talk concretely (and succinctly!) about specific sorts of actions and societal changes your approach would trigger and how soon we could expect them. I agree, by the way, that many of the problems we now face have resulted from science/technology!
You see, I’d be happy to retire this blog if someone can show me a better way of averting the catastrophe to which I’ve referred. I did not really come to this work “voluntarily.” I came to it because it was obvious there was a huge global ecological issue which was not being sufficiently addressed or publicized.
Second, what is the chance, within the next several decades, of getting society to abandon science without its being forced to, perhaps by some apocalyptic series of events? Remember, your solution has to be well along within a few decades. The answer is the chance is right around 0.000000000001 %. A solution with no chance of happening is not very useful.
I suggest we have a hugely better chance, in that time, of implementing some actions to better address population growth, consumption growth, and economic growth. Sure those actions may create new problems, but they at least have the potential to buy us some time. Maybe we can then use that time to completely restructure society, abandon science, etc.
Certainly we need to take the time to develop a whole new world view and relationship with the earth.
By the way, my main emphases are on reducing population growth and economic growth. That’s not science, so I’m not sure what you object to there.
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher // December 31, 2007 at 5:46 pm
I understand your dilemma. You are wrestling with your humanitarian self. Let me explain something to you, something I think will point toward the solution.
Humanitarian beliefs are based upon half-truthed notions that we can have our cake and eat it too. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Our secular humanist instincts are forth tier moral concerns, and less compelling than first, second or third tier moral issues.
Prioitization of morality judgment calls:
First tier - Sustenance and existence for the future. Avoidance of self-destruction, closing the door to all humanity in the future..
Second tier - Quality of life for the future. Pollution, over population, limiting dangerous knowledge sets.
Third tier - (built upon the second tier) quality of life as it relates to diversity (species diversity cannot be replaced), and a smaller human footprint.
Fourth tier - (built upon third tier) quality of life based upon the sort of human existence we by our experience find amenable and we would like to bequeath to the future. (This is the level at which we are concerned about the die off you predict.) The concern is fourth in line.
Also on fourth tier - the sort of society we would wish to pass on to the future, i.e., democracy? - not such a short lifetime? - not so much murder and mayhem?
Now, note each of these four tiers, they all emphasize the impact on the future.
How can that be?
Look. We have nothing to complain about. We are at the party. Stop complaining. Just don’t act like this is your place and you can do with it anything you want. We are guests of the future that will replace us. Respect the host of this marvelous party. That is your primary moral duty..
The future is what is morally important.
Had our past been civilized, it would have realized this and we would be living with the benefit of their moral emphasis.
Instead we are living with the legacy of the empricists and the humanists, each of whom sought to make the world better for the present in the mistaken belief such an emphasis would confer upon the future a better present to follow.
This was an aberration.
Now, as for your dire-need precipitous graph and article you link to.
I and you (if you think about it) both know, we’re asking to have our cake and eat it too, if we think there isn’t going to be a massive die off. It can be managed to some degree, but there is no way around it. Given our current course, without a massive die off, it will be 60 years due to Malthusean reality before the world’s population even has a chance at leveling off. So, get used to it, because we’re seeing the die off all around us already occurring. We’re up to our neck in it already.
If you read Twain’s “Innocents Abroad” circa 1870, you will find, the die off was occurring then too in the old world.
So, I am not playing God when I say, let it happen to reduce the severity of what will come to the future. In other words, forget the golden rule and do for the future as you would have had the past do for us in the present.
Anything short of this approach is only going to exacerbate the problem to the extent that what you deem impossible to tolerate will seem mild by what you will obligate the future to undergo due to an obvious meddling incompetence we see everywhere in our world today.
And even were you able to courageously and heroically postpone the calamity, it is still going to end up catching up and surpassing what you saved in suffering by leaps and bounds.
That’s the moral choice. And viewed in the perspective of reality, the only moral choice is obvious.
Give the benefit of your wisdom to the future, not toward attempting to alleviate the problems of the present at the expense of the future.
Preach the end of science, not again the false salvation science has never been able to deliver.
So, the solution then is to expose the liars and the frauds, to negate and stigmatize the liars that perpetuate the dangerous myth of science’s right to rule, or even to exist and continue to steal from the future with an ever decreasing return on the value stolen.
One can accuse in a humanist way, I am immoral not to try. But it is beyond trying and has been for a long time, ever since it required yet more gambles where the wager is the future. These gambles are immoral because the constant losses are cumulatively stealing from the future.
We simply are not competent to easily improve the world, and we never could be competent.enough to improve life, for life is the ultimate truth and the ultimate good wrapped up in a single whole.
Science is a gambler who is flat busted.
So, consider:
Well more than half those being born today will live their short lives in conditions you or I would deem entirely intolerable. And the percentage of those living in intolerable conditions increases every day.
Is it moral to offer these poor wretched beings the false hope of a scientific messiah who will solve all their problems that were in fact caused by science?
NO! We are not Gods. We are human beings. We have no such prescience that can improve the world or life except by preventing other humans from making the same mistakes we can observe have brought us to this intolerable precipice.
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher
growthbuster // January 1, 2008 at 8:42 am
As I research my documentary, I am constantly discovering new data, new examples both good and bad, and new prophets. When I find one as articulate and well-researched as John Feeney, I like to share it. I recommend the following very highly:
hidden holocaust–civilizational crisis, Part 3: THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT?
http://nafeez.blogspot.com/2008/01/hidden-holocaust-civilizational-crisis.html
Happy New Year!
Dave Gardner
Producer/Director
Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity
http://www.growthbusters.com
John Feeney // January 1, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Dave,
Thanks for the link. I believe I ran across that blog once before, but never had a chance to look closely.
I’ll read it with interest.
Magne Karlsen // January 1, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Dave,
Thank you. These three articles on “the hidden holocaust” are all wonderful. There’s not much new in them, but for wrapping things up quite elegantly, Nafeez Ahmed he deserves all manner of credit.
John Feeney // January 1, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Don,
Ah, okay, so you see collapse as inevitable and any effort to prevent or mitigate it as bound to make it worse.
(1) That collapse is inevitable is a respectable opinion, but it is only an opinion. At this point no one knows for sure if it might be averted or significantly mitigated. (Yes, it may be in process as we speak. Another respectable opinion. That doesn’t really alter my argument.) Some good sites sharing your opinion are those promoting “rewilding,” a return to a more primitive way of living once human numbers have declined to well under 1 billion.
My view is that as long as I’m not absolutely convinced collapse is inevitable, it only makes sense to work to avert or at least mitigate it. Note that reducing population growth - to take one example - should be one of the few actions we can take now which would, in fact, have a mitigating effect in the event of a major collapse some decades down the road.
The same problem of “opinion” applies to the notion that any efforts to avert or mitigate are absolutely destined to make things worse.
(2) I don’t think there’s a clean dividing line between human actions in general and those aimed at improving the future. If we tried not at all to improve the future, many of our actions would nevertheless overlap with those we now take with improvement of the future in mind. So I don’t think we can say we suddenly start being destructive the moment we include a thought of improving the future in our actions.
(3) As I’ve said, the things I and many others here promote (e.g., reducing population growth, addressing economic growth) really aren’t science. So, while I’m sure we could discuss and quibble about science, it’s a discussion which may not, in any event, apply.
(4) You say, “forget the golden rule and do for the future as you would have had the past do for us in the present.”