bigmacbear (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bigmacbear) wrote2008-05-31 07:42 pm
bigmacbear) wrote2008-05-31 07:42 pm
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Soylent Green is people!!! -- On Apocalypses
Amartya Sen, who teaches economics and philosophy at Harvard, wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times which spawned a rather heated discussion with respect to what we are going to do about the skyrocketing prices of fuel and food.
A poster to that discussion included a link to an article on dieoff.org which concludes that the Earth's capacity to feed humanity is constrained (primarily by land degradation, lack of pure water, and lack of energy resources to sustain intensive agriculture), such that under current conditions we barely have enough resources globally to feed the current population and absolutely no hope of feeding the projected doubling of the human population by 2050.
Other articles on the site posit that civilization as we know it is impossible without the abundance of fossil fuels which is about to come to an unescapable end, that human civilization must eventually grind to a halt because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics (which posits that the disorder in the universe must inexorably increase), and that economic growth must cease to avoid the Tragedy of the Commons (in which one person's overuse of resources leads inevitably to everyone's overuse and the ultimate collapse of the resource).
One of the consequences of all this doom and gloom is that there will inevitably be a period in which the remnants of humanity scramble to survive as the resources we need for existence dwindle to levels that will sustain only the tiniest fraction of the current human population. The dystopia featured in Soylent Green and Mad Max 2:The Road Warrior may, and in the minds of some of these commentators, must, come to pass, and sooner than we think.
What strikes me about these dire warnings is not so much the problem faced but the argument, presented as fact, that as much as we see the imperative to DO SOMETHING coming out of these various quarters, it appears there is little or nothing that can ultimately be done -- that carbon credits, conservation, and all the infrastructure we are developing to deal with peak oil and global climate change will ultimately be for naught, and the decline of humanity is inevitable. The only question is, when will it happen and will it come with a bang or with a whimper?
My reaction is to look at the immediate past era in which the Sword of Damocles hanging over the collective head of humanity was Mutually Assured Destruction and nuclear annihilation.* This coming apocalypse has the same flavor of dread and inevitability as World War III did for the whole of my formative years. Yet we all seem to have survived, and even thrived, with this enormous storm cloud over our heads for the latter half of the 20th century.
The secret, I think, lies in the Serenity Prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Efforts to conserve energy and to "live simply that others may simply live" are all well and good.
But I suspect that ultimately each individual's effort will make so little difference in the grand scheme of things, that we all will have to learn to ignore the prophets of doom and make the most of the precious time we have left.
*Side note: When I was very little and first heard this word, without having seen it in print, I thought it would be spelled "iniolation" like it was pronounced. ;-)
A poster to that discussion included a link to an article on dieoff.org which concludes that the Earth's capacity to feed humanity is constrained (primarily by land degradation, lack of pure water, and lack of energy resources to sustain intensive agriculture), such that under current conditions we barely have enough resources globally to feed the current population and absolutely no hope of feeding the projected doubling of the human population by 2050.
Other articles on the site posit that civilization as we know it is impossible without the abundance of fossil fuels which is about to come to an unescapable end, that human civilization must eventually grind to a halt because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics (which posits that the disorder in the universe must inexorably increase), and that economic growth must cease to avoid the Tragedy of the Commons (in which one person's overuse of resources leads inevitably to everyone's overuse and the ultimate collapse of the resource).
One of the consequences of all this doom and gloom is that there will inevitably be a period in which the remnants of humanity scramble to survive as the resources we need for existence dwindle to levels that will sustain only the tiniest fraction of the current human population. The dystopia featured in Soylent Green and Mad Max 2:The Road Warrior may, and in the minds of some of these commentators, must, come to pass, and sooner than we think.
What strikes me about these dire warnings is not so much the problem faced but the argument, presented as fact, that as much as we see the imperative to DO SOMETHING coming out of these various quarters, it appears there is little or nothing that can ultimately be done -- that carbon credits, conservation, and all the infrastructure we are developing to deal with peak oil and global climate change will ultimately be for naught, and the decline of humanity is inevitable. The only question is, when will it happen and will it come with a bang or with a whimper?
My reaction is to look at the immediate past era in which the Sword of Damocles hanging over the collective head of humanity was Mutually Assured Destruction and nuclear annihilation.* This coming apocalypse has the same flavor of dread and inevitability as World War III did for the whole of my formative years. Yet we all seem to have survived, and even thrived, with this enormous storm cloud over our heads for the latter half of the 20th century.
The secret, I think, lies in the Serenity Prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Efforts to conserve energy and to "live simply that others may simply live" are all well and good.
But I suspect that ultimately each individual's effort will make so little difference in the grand scheme of things, that we all will have to learn to ignore the prophets of doom and make the most of the precious time we have left.
*Side note: When I was very little and first heard this word, without having seen it in print, I thought it would be spelled "iniolation" like it was pronounced. ;-)
no subject
Now, I'm 40, and am still amazed to be alive sometimes.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, I breathed a sigh of relief, and got on with my life. But then the latter day doomsayers switched from nuclear annihilation to more esoteric scenarios. Overpopulation. Environmental degradation. Y2K. Peak oil. Water wars. Global warming. Pandemic disease outbreaks. Terrorists. Economic collapse. Food shortages.
I don't want to live in fear. What is it about our culture that encourages this kind of apocalyptic thinking? Is it the Christian influence? A barely conscious zeitgeist that understands that our way of life is untenable? A species "memory" of what will happen to us in the future?
Or is this undercurrent a healthy and sane fear, that keeps us FROM killing ourselves off as a species?
I honestly don't know.
I've often felt myself sliding into the dark pit of despair of "why bother?" Feeling like everything I do is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, or sitting in an airplane that is going to crash. What's the point?
But a very wise counselor threw that back in my face, and said, "OK, so why bother? Maybe the world IS going to hell in a handbasket. You don't know and I don't know. Does that mean you shouldn't be making things better for everyone else in the meantime? If we are on a jet plane that is going down, someone needs to be calm enough to put the oxygen masks on the others."
She had a point.
So now, like the band on the Titanic, I play on. I don't know what the future holds for us as a people, much less for myself. But I do know, I have the power to make life better for those around me NOW, and I have a responsibility to give to those around me, regardless of whether we are all going to live and die in the future.
It keeps me getting up in the morning.
Sorry for the vent, I just felt like sharing.
Life goes on
"Life goes on."
I just need to keep reminding myself of this fact. I suspect that if the human race is in fact doomed to suffer a mass culling like these folks have been gibbering on about, it isn't going to matter to each individual until his or her time comes. Until then, life goes on. Which is the point I was trying to make about The Bomb.
I appreciate your perspective on these matters. Thanks for sharing.