Thanks for posting that video, Lorne. Any species that cannot live in harmony with its environment, that even comes to dominate and overwhelm its environment is inherently parasitic and self-extinguishing. We've done this before on a smaller scale time and again. The Mayans, the Easter Islanders, the Mesopotamians - civilizations that come off the land, organize and rise to a peak before suddenly collapsing.
The seeds of our collapse are found in our inability to get beyond 18th century economics, 19th century industrialism and 20th century geopolitics. We're more afraid of abandoning our our slavish pursuit of perpetual, exponential growth than the far worse outcome that's inevitable in our success. Where this ends is a matter of mathematical certainty. We're consuming Earth's resources at more than 1.5 times the planet's carrying capacity and our voraciousness is accelerating. It's a dependency more powerful than heroin or crystal meth and far more lethal. Like a chronic junkie we're prepared to live in our ever worsening filth. Rivers that no longer flow to the sea, freshwater no longer fit for human consumption, oceanic dead zones, fish stock collapses, a fouled atmosphere even to the polar regions where black soot darkens the ice caps, aquifers running on empty but, as this video shows, it doesn't matter when your reality is refreshed daily on some electronic screen. We've been conditioned, Lorne, powerfully conditioned to be fearful and complacent and, especially, to recoil at the notion of change. We've become the vivisectionist's dog, lovingly licking the master's hand while the other hand holds the scalpel plunged into us.
You've stated our collective folly quite eloquently, Mound. I would like to put your comments as a separate post.
It has often been postulated that one of the reasons we have thus far been unable to detect advanced alien civilizations is that they, like us, could very well have developed technology well-ahead of their wisdom to use it properly. I often envisaged that to mean some kind of cataclysmic military Armageddon. I wonder if, instead, they may have wiped themselves out as we are doing, not with a bang but with a long, painful, protracted whimper.
Thanks for posting that video, Lorne. Any species that cannot live in harmony with its environment, that even comes to dominate and overwhelm its environment is inherently parasitic and self-extinguishing. We've done this before on a smaller scale time and again. The Mayans, the Easter Islanders, the Mesopotamians - civilizations that come off the land, organize and rise to a peak before suddenly collapsing.
ReplyDeleteThe seeds of our collapse are found in our inability to get beyond 18th century economics, 19th century industrialism and 20th century geopolitics. We're more afraid of abandoning our our slavish pursuit of perpetual, exponential growth than the far worse outcome that's inevitable in our success. Where this ends is a matter of mathematical certainty. We're consuming Earth's resources at more than 1.5 times the planet's carrying capacity and our voraciousness is accelerating. It's a dependency more powerful than heroin or crystal meth and far more lethal. Like a chronic junkie we're prepared to live in our ever worsening filth. Rivers that no longer flow to the sea, freshwater no longer fit for human consumption, oceanic dead zones, fish stock collapses, a fouled atmosphere even to the polar regions where black soot darkens the ice caps, aquifers running on empty but, as this video shows, it doesn't matter when your reality is refreshed daily on some electronic screen. We've been conditioned, Lorne, powerfully conditioned to be fearful and complacent and, especially, to recoil at the notion of change. We've become the vivisectionist's dog, lovingly licking the master's hand while the other hand holds the scalpel plunged into us.
You've stated our collective folly quite eloquently, Mound. I would like to put your comments as a separate post.
DeleteIt has often been postulated that one of the reasons we have thus far been unable to detect advanced alien civilizations is that they, like us, could very well have developed technology well-ahead of their wisdom to use it properly. I often envisaged that to mean some kind of cataclysmic military Armageddon. I wonder if, instead, they may have wiped themselves out as we are doing, not with a bang but with a long, painful, protracted whimper.
So sadly true, Owen.
ReplyDelete