It should be apparent that I have slowed down on my posting. This is not for lack of ideas, but for lack of time. Fear not, I will continue to post here and I hope to pick up the pace by the end of the year, but this blog is reserved for article-length ideas. I have many smaller ideas throughout the day that I would like to write about, but I don't necessarily have the content to fill a huge DFTA post with. This is where my new Tumblr blog comes in.
My Tumblr Blog
I'll be straight with you. September has been busy as hell and October is going to be busier. November, however, will be nice and quiet. In the meantime, check out my Tumblr because I'll be adding almost-daily comments about society, philosophy and such. My goal with it is to be an anti blog. That is, instead of ruminating about my thoughts on the issue, I'd like to make simple (yet subtly complicated) statements and have you, the reader, do all the rumination. Hope you enjoy it.
30 September 2010
Bite-sized Blogging
Labels:
Blog Cannibalism
17 September 2010
What's the Use of Philosophy?
Not too long ago, I was sent a link to an essay written by Ayn Rand titled “Philosophy: Who Needs It?” Reading over the essay helped me understand why I think philosophy is, for the large part, useless. The key to my reasoning is intellectual honesty and my lack of trust in everyone else to have it. Rand says, more or less, that philosophy exists apart from science to explain what science does not, which I totally disagree with. Classical philosophy is that unnecessary slimy film that settles over the clean surface of the scientifically revealed world, warping its color and texture. If I were to accept Rand's justification for philosophy, I would be lead to believe (as many are) that there is meaning to be found where none actually exists.
Philosophy my be responsible for many idioms and aphorisms that more or less describe what we call "human nature" but they do not describe the universe and objective reality better than science does. Philosophy is aesthetics. Science is structure. Ask "why" something happened is like fucking a duck's vagina - many paths leading to nowhere. Those who influence the world learn that something can happen and how it does. They need not concern themselves with why because they provide the reason when they need to. And any reason will do. This is all to say that philosophy will change with society. The only constants are the physical laws in effect and the human nature that will not change no matter how aware we are of it.
How should people approach the subject of philosophy? By skipping over it completely and going straight to science. An example of this lies in the essential conundrum introduced through ethical dilemmas. There are no easy answers with many of the questions that I wrote about in my last entry. Even if you were a hard-line individualist, you would have found your views challenged if you were intellectually honest enough to consider the effects of rampant individual sovereignty on the lives of others. Philosophy can't answer those questions any better than flipping a coin does. However, when we look at empirical data on the effect of choices, we come up with better ways to calibrate our world. If we know we have a much higher chance of being happy when we submit our decisions to an authority, what is the use of philosophy?
Can we empirically know everything? Another philosophical question. The answer isn't important. The only thing that is important is the fact that the world will never work in such a way where philosophy matters more than a toke from a bong. Meanwhile, class warfare is a reality that nobody will ever outlive. This means that those who get this will find ways to engineer the world to take advantage of "human nature." To sum it up: we should seek knowledge, not interpretation.
Philosophy my be responsible for many idioms and aphorisms that more or less describe what we call "human nature" but they do not describe the universe and objective reality better than science does. Philosophy is aesthetics. Science is structure. Ask "why" something happened is like fucking a duck's vagina - many paths leading to nowhere. Those who influence the world learn that something can happen and how it does. They need not concern themselves with why because they provide the reason when they need to. And any reason will do. This is all to say that philosophy will change with society. The only constants are the physical laws in effect and the human nature that will not change no matter how aware we are of it.
How should people approach the subject of philosophy? By skipping over it completely and going straight to science. An example of this lies in the essential conundrum introduced through ethical dilemmas. There are no easy answers with many of the questions that I wrote about in my last entry. Even if you were a hard-line individualist, you would have found your views challenged if you were intellectually honest enough to consider the effects of rampant individual sovereignty on the lives of others. Philosophy can't answer those questions any better than flipping a coin does. However, when we look at empirical data on the effect of choices, we come up with better ways to calibrate our world. If we know we have a much higher chance of being happy when we submit our decisions to an authority, what is the use of philosophy?
Can we empirically know everything? Another philosophical question. The answer isn't important. The only thing that is important is the fact that the world will never work in such a way where philosophy matters more than a toke from a bong. Meanwhile, class warfare is a reality that nobody will ever outlive. This means that those who get this will find ways to engineer the world to take advantage of "human nature." To sum it up: we should seek knowledge, not interpretation.
Labels:
Philosophy
11 September 2010
Bioethics: A Crash Course
Last night I attended a lecture on bioethics. Coming into it, I had my doubts about the topic, but this was mainly because I knew so little about it. I suppose I figured that it was just sensitivity training for the new age, but I was quickly drawn in to the conundrum that the lecture presented. In actuality, I learned, the field of bioethics presents some incredibly complicated scenarios for which there are no easy answers. In fact, due to the subjective nature of societal ethics, it would seem that there are no right answers, nor really wrong ones either. Furthermore, combined with what I know about behavioral economics and the science of decision making, the best approach I could reason for many of these questions leads to conclusions that are unsettling in appearance, but practical in application.
In our fiercely independent individualist society, the questions posed at the turn of the previous century in the realm of bioethics seem like no-brainers. Who would dream of neutering individuals if they were deemed imbecilic? The fear, at the time, was that these mentally unfit individuals would breed and contaminate society. Eugenics was a popular idea at the time, even endorsed by President Theodore Roosevelt, and laws that called for the neutering of unfit individuals (repeat criminals and mentally deficient people) were adopted by many states. The practice continued up until 1979. Nowadays, we gasp in horror at the thought of such a thing happening. Who has that kind of authority?
The questions don’t get any easier to answer. In liberal society, we fiercely defend an individual’s control over their personal domain, but at what point does one man’s domain affect another, and at what point does a child’s domain separate from its parent’s? Why do we allow male circumcision, but not female circumcision? What makes abortion legal, but culling your born children murder? As genetic engineering becomes a possibility, is it ethical to manufacture your perfect child? What is perfect? There are no easy answers.
One case that is particularly striking is that of a deaf couple with one child who is also deaf. Their goal is to have another child, and they want to give that child the best chance they can to also be born deaf. The reason for this is because they want the child to grow up in their deaf society. Now, if one views deafness as a defect, we might consider these parents to be quite sick in the head. However, it is clear that these parents embrace their condition and want the same for their child. Is it right for them to determine the outcome of their child’s life to the extent that they have a life-changing disability? Does the fact that they do it before conception change anything? Everyone has a different answer.
How about obvious genetic diseases? Is it right for parents to cull out possibilities of conditions that will impede their child’s ability to have a normal, healthy life? One community of potential genetic disease carriers (the name of the disease escapes me, but it is a very select population) is fighting to prevent gene mappers from identifying the gene that causes their disease. It is one that strikes people down in their middle age quite swiftly and traumatically, so why would you want to prevent people from knowing they are a carrier? There are obvious social stigmas associated with diseases as grave as this one. Why, with people now privy to such information, it would affect one’s ability to live a normal life (up until the point that the disease kicks in, at least). And believe me, most people just want to be normal.
From a business perspective, if you knew your chances of getting a genetic disease was low, you might skimp on the amount of insurance you buy whereas someone who was high risk would purchase more. But that skews the balance of how insurance is supposed to work. Insurance is a pooled risk venture, but if only the high risk people bought insurance, the whole system would fail. These are only some of the problems introduced by learning about your genetic makeup. As the future approaches and times change, we will be forced to adapt to the new knowledge and how it affects old business. Once again, there are no easy answers.
As I listened to the lecture, I was constantly stumped by the compelling questions that could go either way, depending on if you listened to the individual or their society. One audience member asked the speaker what the purpose of ethics was. This was the question that had been brewing in my own head. I was searching for answers, but I did not know what approach to take. All the speaker could do was acknowledge that ethics lead to wildly inconsistent conclusions. There is no hard and fast rule when it comes to these decisions. This did not satisfy me.
The last response from the audience for the night was the one that really set off a spark for me. It was from a fellow behavioral economics buff who cited a study where parents who had to decide to euthanize their child experienced more grief than when the doctor made the decision for them. Everything started falling into place inside my head. The answers were not nice.
Individualism is a pillar of Western society; we make our own damn decisions. We don’t consider overpopulation. We don’t consider welfare. We don’t think of our neighbors. We rarely think of the environment. We just do what makes us happy. There are countries around the world where things are different; people submit many daily decisions to the will of the state. Chinese parents cannot grow their family to their heart’s desire. They do so to their state’s desire. We over here in the West see that as (to put it lightly) a huge bummer. Still, they may be onto something.
Taking into consideration the level of grief experienced when one makes their own decisions, we might find it more emotionally economical to have the decision made for us by some authority. However, the freedom to make that choice is exactly what we hold dear in our society. So we are left with the true question: will we ever forfeit our ability to choose, knowing that we may very well be happier that way?
In our fiercely independent individualist society, the questions posed at the turn of the previous century in the realm of bioethics seem like no-brainers. Who would dream of neutering individuals if they were deemed imbecilic? The fear, at the time, was that these mentally unfit individuals would breed and contaminate society. Eugenics was a popular idea at the time, even endorsed by President Theodore Roosevelt, and laws that called for the neutering of unfit individuals (repeat criminals and mentally deficient people) were adopted by many states. The practice continued up until 1979. Nowadays, we gasp in horror at the thought of such a thing happening. Who has that kind of authority?
The questions don’t get any easier to answer. In liberal society, we fiercely defend an individual’s control over their personal domain, but at what point does one man’s domain affect another, and at what point does a child’s domain separate from its parent’s? Why do we allow male circumcision, but not female circumcision? What makes abortion legal, but culling your born children murder? As genetic engineering becomes a possibility, is it ethical to manufacture your perfect child? What is perfect? There are no easy answers.
One case that is particularly striking is that of a deaf couple with one child who is also deaf. Their goal is to have another child, and they want to give that child the best chance they can to also be born deaf. The reason for this is because they want the child to grow up in their deaf society. Now, if one views deafness as a defect, we might consider these parents to be quite sick in the head. However, it is clear that these parents embrace their condition and want the same for their child. Is it right for them to determine the outcome of their child’s life to the extent that they have a life-changing disability? Does the fact that they do it before conception change anything? Everyone has a different answer.
How about obvious genetic diseases? Is it right for parents to cull out possibilities of conditions that will impede their child’s ability to have a normal, healthy life? One community of potential genetic disease carriers (the name of the disease escapes me, but it is a very select population) is fighting to prevent gene mappers from identifying the gene that causes their disease. It is one that strikes people down in their middle age quite swiftly and traumatically, so why would you want to prevent people from knowing they are a carrier? There are obvious social stigmas associated with diseases as grave as this one. Why, with people now privy to such information, it would affect one’s ability to live a normal life (up until the point that the disease kicks in, at least). And believe me, most people just want to be normal.
From a business perspective, if you knew your chances of getting a genetic disease was low, you might skimp on the amount of insurance you buy whereas someone who was high risk would purchase more. But that skews the balance of how insurance is supposed to work. Insurance is a pooled risk venture, but if only the high risk people bought insurance, the whole system would fail. These are only some of the problems introduced by learning about your genetic makeup. As the future approaches and times change, we will be forced to adapt to the new knowledge and how it affects old business. Once again, there are no easy answers.
As I listened to the lecture, I was constantly stumped by the compelling questions that could go either way, depending on if you listened to the individual or their society. One audience member asked the speaker what the purpose of ethics was. This was the question that had been brewing in my own head. I was searching for answers, but I did not know what approach to take. All the speaker could do was acknowledge that ethics lead to wildly inconsistent conclusions. There is no hard and fast rule when it comes to these decisions. This did not satisfy me.
The last response from the audience for the night was the one that really set off a spark for me. It was from a fellow behavioral economics buff who cited a study where parents who had to decide to euthanize their child experienced more grief than when the doctor made the decision for them. Everything started falling into place inside my head. The answers were not nice.
Individualism is a pillar of Western society; we make our own damn decisions. We don’t consider overpopulation. We don’t consider welfare. We don’t think of our neighbors. We rarely think of the environment. We just do what makes us happy. There are countries around the world where things are different; people submit many daily decisions to the will of the state. Chinese parents cannot grow their family to their heart’s desire. They do so to their state’s desire. We over here in the West see that as (to put it lightly) a huge bummer. Still, they may be onto something.
Taking into consideration the level of grief experienced when one makes their own decisions, we might find it more emotionally economical to have the decision made for us by some authority. However, the freedom to make that choice is exactly what we hold dear in our society. So we are left with the true question: will we ever forfeit our ability to choose, knowing that we may very well be happier that way?
Labels:
Human Behavior
07 September 2010
I Know There Is No God
The title of this piece is sure to draw some ire from nearly everyone. There are believers who flat out disagree with me and then there are agnostics and atheists who say that there is no way to know. Well, I know there is no god. And I hate to have it sound so condescending, but that’s what the following wall of text is for. I’m going to explain why it is OK to honestly say that you KNOW that there is no god. I’ve purposefully stirred up the hornet nest on Reddit and have received over 250 criticisms, conjectures and attacks regarding this and I have this to say in response: relax! I’m going to try to address every major concern here.
I know there is no god, just as you know there are no fairies and no pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. The only thing substantiating the god idea is the fact that more people believe it than the fairy story. If I were to say that I know there are no fairies, there would be no argument. Most would agree. Nobody would whip out their overinflated love for epistemology to strike the notion down. So what about the idea of god makes people so righteous about the semantics of knowledge? You’d think these atheists were just agnostics the way they defend god’s right to be considered despite claiming to not believe in it.
I see most atheists as timid creatures, bound by a code of honor that restrains them. Some call it the scientific method, some call it logic, but they apply it far more liberally than they should. I love the scientific method more than most but I have to agree with the quacks on this one; it can’t be used to explain everything. The most frequent response to my claim is that you cannot disprove something that doesn’t exist. So true. But if it doesn’t exist for me to disprove it, can I not say that I know it does not exist?
Of course not. This is where the philosophy jocks step in. Supposedly, if I claim that I know something that cannot be proven, I am no better than a fundamentalist. Ahh, this is where I apply a little misdirection. If I can prove, instead, that the idea of god is a man-made notion, would that not relieve me of the burden of disproving a negative? I sure think so. And before you tell me that a god may exist that has not yet been dreamed of by man, might I remind you about the fairies?
The key to knowing that god does not exist is to acknowledge that he was invented by man to explain the mystery of life and existence. He is no longer necessary, though, as we have learned enough to understand our place in the world with our own knowledge. (Our place, if you’re wondering, is without purpose or meaning. Yay, nihilism!) Though there is much that we do not know, the idea that what we do know is never enough to make a certain claim is such patent bullshit. I have no interest in jerking off to a philosophy text.
The knowledge that there is no god is a priori. Epistemological philosophy is such that if you apply it haphazardly like a jackass, you end up in a loop where you can never truly know anything. The moment that you appeal to this mindfuck of a philosophy, you’re lost. The very statement “you can’t prove it/anything decisively” sets off a shock wave of logical consequences. If the certainty with which I know gods non-existence to be true is useless, what good is anything else you or I consider to be knowledge? You cannot function in life if you honestly think this is a valid way to look at the world. Imagine opening your eyes after a night’s sleep and not being certain about anything. You wouldn’t be able to move if you required “absolute” knowledge to act. Thus, by epistemological definition, getting out of bed in the morning is an act of faith. What mental masturbation!
For every posturing pseudo-philosopher, there seems to be a large space between certainty and absolute knowledge that I simply don't respect. I think that certainty covers the gap quite well and classical philosophers tend to agree with me. Philosophy hacks have put guard rails along the edge though, creating conjectures that make it "theoretically" impossible to know things. They're mad.
Why is what I’m saying any different than a fundamentalist claiming that they “know” god exists? This is the question that the Knights of the Holy Scientific Method like to pose. As if by making a statement that supposedly cannot be falsified, we fall to corruption. Like the paragraphs above demonstrate, life is full of unfalsifiable knowledge, stuff that you just KNOW, and the fact that it cannot be proven either way doesn’t make it less true or useful. Again, we make super-special considerations when it comes to this damned “god” idea. We apply levels of logic that we otherwise wouldn’t have. It reminds me of the fact that South Park once depicted the prophet Mohammad in an episode without controversy, but now that the world is hypersensitive to it, they censored the most recent appearance of the prophet. Same situation, different rules.
Carl Sagan once said, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Indeed, this is a true statement and it has been used to refute my claim, but I am not using only god's lack of evidence as evidence to support my statement.
Next comes the most amusing argument: you cannot use knowledge of the physical world to disprove something that exists beyond it. Well, what would be the purpose of declaring the existence of a metaphysical god if it could not affect the laws of physics? A god who is 100% ineffective is just as good as a god who is 100% nonexistent. The only way to ever have evidence of god (a useful one at least) is to have physical effects that can be attributed to it. In the past, we’ve been fooled into believing what we see is the hand of god at work, but we’ve grown out of that.
We humans have a history of speaking before we have all the facts. Why, at a few points in the last 200 years it was declared that we had learned everything there is to know about the world, only to find how wrong we were. You might think this would prevent me from making further definite claims, but I’m not going there. Every scientific discovery of knowledge has further marginalized the necessity of god. That is the trend and it will continue. We can now trace nearly every question we had 2000 years ago to areas of science that we have even a small amount of knowledge in. Any new gods or metaphysical philosophies that we invent are merely there to ask the new questions that further developments will surely shed light on.
Douglas Adams once said:
This quote sums up a large portion of my argument. Why give the idea of god as fair a shake as the idea of fairies?
I know there is no god, just as you know there are no fairies and no pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. The only thing substantiating the god idea is the fact that more people believe it than the fairy story. If I were to say that I know there are no fairies, there would be no argument. Most would agree. Nobody would whip out their overinflated love for epistemology to strike the notion down. So what about the idea of god makes people so righteous about the semantics of knowledge? You’d think these atheists were just agnostics the way they defend god’s right to be considered despite claiming to not believe in it.
I see most atheists as timid creatures, bound by a code of honor that restrains them. Some call it the scientific method, some call it logic, but they apply it far more liberally than they should. I love the scientific method more than most but I have to agree with the quacks on this one; it can’t be used to explain everything. The most frequent response to my claim is that you cannot disprove something that doesn’t exist. So true. But if it doesn’t exist for me to disprove it, can I not say that I know it does not exist?
Of course not. This is where the philosophy jocks step in. Supposedly, if I claim that I know something that cannot be proven, I am no better than a fundamentalist. Ahh, this is where I apply a little misdirection. If I can prove, instead, that the idea of god is a man-made notion, would that not relieve me of the burden of disproving a negative? I sure think so. And before you tell me that a god may exist that has not yet been dreamed of by man, might I remind you about the fairies?
The key to knowing that god does not exist is to acknowledge that he was invented by man to explain the mystery of life and existence. He is no longer necessary, though, as we have learned enough to understand our place in the world with our own knowledge. (Our place, if you’re wondering, is without purpose or meaning. Yay, nihilism!) Though there is much that we do not know, the idea that what we do know is never enough to make a certain claim is such patent bullshit. I have no interest in jerking off to a philosophy text.
The knowledge that there is no god is a priori. Epistemological philosophy is such that if you apply it haphazardly like a jackass, you end up in a loop where you can never truly know anything. The moment that you appeal to this mindfuck of a philosophy, you’re lost. The very statement “you can’t prove it/anything decisively” sets off a shock wave of logical consequences. If the certainty with which I know gods non-existence to be true is useless, what good is anything else you or I consider to be knowledge? You cannot function in life if you honestly think this is a valid way to look at the world. Imagine opening your eyes after a night’s sleep and not being certain about anything. You wouldn’t be able to move if you required “absolute” knowledge to act. Thus, by epistemological definition, getting out of bed in the morning is an act of faith. What mental masturbation!
For every posturing pseudo-philosopher, there seems to be a large space between certainty and absolute knowledge that I simply don't respect. I think that certainty covers the gap quite well and classical philosophers tend to agree with me. Philosophy hacks have put guard rails along the edge though, creating conjectures that make it "theoretically" impossible to know things. They're mad.
Why is what I’m saying any different than a fundamentalist claiming that they “know” god exists? This is the question that the Knights of the Holy Scientific Method like to pose. As if by making a statement that supposedly cannot be falsified, we fall to corruption. Like the paragraphs above demonstrate, life is full of unfalsifiable knowledge, stuff that you just KNOW, and the fact that it cannot be proven either way doesn’t make it less true or useful. Again, we make super-special considerations when it comes to this damned “god” idea. We apply levels of logic that we otherwise wouldn’t have. It reminds me of the fact that South Park once depicted the prophet Mohammad in an episode without controversy, but now that the world is hypersensitive to it, they censored the most recent appearance of the prophet. Same situation, different rules.
Carl Sagan once said, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Indeed, this is a true statement and it has been used to refute my claim, but I am not using only god's lack of evidence as evidence to support my statement.
Next comes the most amusing argument: you cannot use knowledge of the physical world to disprove something that exists beyond it. Well, what would be the purpose of declaring the existence of a metaphysical god if it could not affect the laws of physics? A god who is 100% ineffective is just as good as a god who is 100% nonexistent. The only way to ever have evidence of god (a useful one at least) is to have physical effects that can be attributed to it. In the past, we’ve been fooled into believing what we see is the hand of god at work, but we’ve grown out of that.
We humans have a history of speaking before we have all the facts. Why, at a few points in the last 200 years it was declared that we had learned everything there is to know about the world, only to find how wrong we were. You might think this would prevent me from making further definite claims, but I’m not going there. Every scientific discovery of knowledge has further marginalized the necessity of god. That is the trend and it will continue. We can now trace nearly every question we had 2000 years ago to areas of science that we have even a small amount of knowledge in. Any new gods or metaphysical philosophies that we invent are merely there to ask the new questions that further developments will surely shed light on.
Douglas Adams once said:
I don’t accept the currently fashionable assertion that any view is automatically as worthy of respect as any equal and opposite view. My view is that the moon is made of rock. If someone says to me “Well, you haven’t been there, have you? You haven’t seen it for yourself, so my view that it is made of Norwegian Beaver Cheese is equally valid” - then I can’t even be bothered to argue. There is such a thing as the burden of proof, and in the case of god, as in the case of the composition of the moon, this has shifted radically. God used to be the best explanation we’d got, and we’ve now got vastly better ones. God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. So I don’t think that being convinced that there is no god is as irrational or arrogant a point of view as belief that there is. I don’t think the matter calls for even-handedness at all.
This quote sums up a large portion of my argument. Why give the idea of god as fair a shake as the idea of fairies?
01 September 2010
The Earth Can Save Itself
From a nihilist perspective, saving the planet is a fairly confusing idea. Honestly, I don’t even know where the danger is coming from. Don’t get me wrong, I think it would be great if we used less resources and destroyed less nature if only for the effect on quality of life. But, objectively speaking, I don’t think the planet is in any peril that we can either accelerate or prevent. Let us not forget that 4 billion years ago, the planet was a violent and muggy place, inhospitable to all multi-cellular species that live today, yet here it is, still revolving around the Sun. What I’m trying to say is that the plea to “save the planet” is quite disingenuous and a bit of an exaggeration. Sort of like calling a pageant winner “Miss Universe” instead of “Miss Vain Humanity.”
I’m writing this as a gunman is pacing the lobby of the Discovery Channel building in Maryland. His mission is to get the Discovery Channel to broadcast various shows to help “save the planet.” I think what he really wants is relief for his guilt. He feels guilty for everything society has done to change the landscape of Earth’s surface. He fears for his species’ survival. He’s also a nutcase. Here is a summary of his demands of the channel:
1. Promote restrictions on reproduction.
2. Stop pretending that saving lives is heroic.
3. Stop focusing on war because the root of war is overpopulation.
4. Denounce immigration.
5. Promote environmental harmony.
6. Get the message across that humans are disgusting and should not be allowed to breed.
7. Find solutions for unemployment.
This guy has got it all wrong. If I wanted humanity to go away then war, destitution and overpopulation would be the first things I would promote. Joking aside, it is clear that this man suffers from societal guilt. He also has his perspectives all messed up.
On Sunday (see my previous entry), I heard a comment that I had to immediately refute. The comment was this: humans are the only species that are out of balance with their ecosystem. It is a classical example of the guilt that environmental activists try to instill in society. Frankly, it is bullshit. I was much more polite when I offered my rebuttal though: The history of species on Earth is filled with examples of populations wrecking havoc on entire ecosystems. Introduce an energetic predator into a community with low predation and watch the devastation. While we may frown at the thought, we have to understand this is the way of the world. Nature has no justice.
There is no standard unit of evolution. There is no single factor that determines if a species is evolutionarily fit. Most of all, no single species or ecosystem is inherently more valuable than any other. Just because humanity has invented morality doesn't mean the universe follows its lead. Do I think we should save the forests and stop killing animals? Yes, of course, it really sets off my compassion sensors when shit like that happens. It's a selfish desire, but I'm honest about it. I think the world will be a lot less interesting if we kill everything in it. But beyond that, there really is no actual impetus to act in any particular way.
Responsibility is a subjective term that means nothing out of context. Humanity is hardly a blip on the cosmic radar and yet it has such a huge sense of importance. If Yellowstone were to blow its top, would we blame ourselves if we survived? What’s so great about this intelligence we’ve got when we can’t even organize for our own rational sakes? The planet will survive long after we’re gone. I think we should look at environmentalism for what it is: selfish, but comforting. If we’re going to “save the planet” we should understand that we’re only saving what is familiar to us. Until the meteors come.
I’m writing this as a gunman is pacing the lobby of the Discovery Channel building in Maryland. His mission is to get the Discovery Channel to broadcast various shows to help “save the planet.” I think what he really wants is relief for his guilt. He feels guilty for everything society has done to change the landscape of Earth’s surface. He fears for his species’ survival. He’s also a nutcase. Here is a summary of his demands of the channel:
1. Promote restrictions on reproduction.
2. Stop pretending that saving lives is heroic.
3. Stop focusing on war because the root of war is overpopulation.
4. Denounce immigration.
5. Promote environmental harmony.
6. Get the message across that humans are disgusting and should not be allowed to breed.
7. Find solutions for unemployment.
This guy has got it all wrong. If I wanted humanity to go away then war, destitution and overpopulation would be the first things I would promote. Joking aside, it is clear that this man suffers from societal guilt. He also has his perspectives all messed up.
On Sunday (see my previous entry), I heard a comment that I had to immediately refute. The comment was this: humans are the only species that are out of balance with their ecosystem. It is a classical example of the guilt that environmental activists try to instill in society. Frankly, it is bullshit. I was much more polite when I offered my rebuttal though: The history of species on Earth is filled with examples of populations wrecking havoc on entire ecosystems. Introduce an energetic predator into a community with low predation and watch the devastation. While we may frown at the thought, we have to understand this is the way of the world. Nature has no justice.
There is no standard unit of evolution. There is no single factor that determines if a species is evolutionarily fit. Most of all, no single species or ecosystem is inherently more valuable than any other. Just because humanity has invented morality doesn't mean the universe follows its lead. Do I think we should save the forests and stop killing animals? Yes, of course, it really sets off my compassion sensors when shit like that happens. It's a selfish desire, but I'm honest about it. I think the world will be a lot less interesting if we kill everything in it. But beyond that, there really is no actual impetus to act in any particular way.
Responsibility is a subjective term that means nothing out of context. Humanity is hardly a blip on the cosmic radar and yet it has such a huge sense of importance. If Yellowstone were to blow its top, would we blame ourselves if we survived? What’s so great about this intelligence we’ve got when we can’t even organize for our own rational sakes? The planet will survive long after we’re gone. I think we should look at environmentalism for what it is: selfish, but comforting. If we’re going to “save the planet” we should understand that we’re only saving what is familiar to us. Until the meteors come.
Labels:
Evolution,
Human Behavior
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