On 11/6/2013 10:13 PM, Chris de Morsella wrote:
*From:*everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] *On
Behalf Of *meekerdb
*Sent:* Wednesday, November 06, 2013 7:40 PM
*To:* everything-list@googlegroups.com
*Subject:* Re: Our Demon-Haunted World
On 11/6/2013 6:32 PM, Chris de Morsella wrote:
The problem of any system ever devised is that eventually it will become
corrupted
-- through one path or another corruption will become endemic and
increasingly it
will parasitize the system until eventually the empty husk of the hollowed
out
society collapses as all the illusions and Ponzi schemes become marked to
market and
no one is buying into it any longer.
Systems are human creations and suffer from all the pitfalls and blindness
characteristic of our species. A system organized around a Party or a
Church will
end up creating the same social structure of a corrupt class of successful
crime
families becoming entrenched at the vertices.
In Roma there is a saying that translated more or less: "The first
generation are
bandits; the second generation are bankers; the third generation are
politicians;
and by the fourth generation a Pope." Or the Anglo saying "Behind every
great
fortune there is a great crime"
I think it is important to look at how even a system dedicated to the
principle of
wiping out class has invariably spawned various nationalistic red
bourgeoisies (the
Radish communists -- red on the outside white on the inside) Look at the
princelings
in the PRC; or the weird family dynasty in the PRK... or the Stalinist
bourgeoisie
of the former USSR. Or conversely how a system purporting to be based on the
teachings of Jesus Christ resulted in the sordid history of the Papacy.
It does not matter much what the superficial forms of a system are, if the
end
outcome is invariably the same -- that is the society becomes dominated by
a small
entrenched elite that enjoys disproportionate benefits and is concerned
only with
its own self-serving interests.
>>You keep making these arguments that everything must necessarily get worse, every human
institution must become an oppressive force run by an oppressive elite for pure
selfishness. This is like the argument Boltzmann initially made that entropy must
always, and has always increased. To which the response was, "Then why is entropy not
maximum and the world not pure chaos? Why is there abundant and complex life?" Maybe
when you ask yourself that question your posts will become more than simple rants and
counsels of despair.
Brent
We are on the path to everything getting worse. The evidence is incontrovertible. Pick
your yardstick: rates of desertification; loss of biodiversity; loss of forest cover;
collapse of ocean food webs; toxification of the biosphere; loss of topsoil; loss of
natural soil fertility; peak fossil energy [peak oil, peak gas, peak coal & peak
uranium]; collapse of resource supplies for many strategic materials required for
industrial civilization.
Mix this all up with our propensity to solve problems by violent means coupled with
weapons systems of a destructiveness and reach that is unparalleled -- and you tell me
why I or any one for that matter should not feel pessimistic, despondent, despairing...
take your pick.
How about incidence of violence, c.f. Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels of Our Nature".
Or the below-replacement birthrate throughout most of the OECD. How about the fall of
communist totalitarianism in Russia and China. The peaceful revolutions in Poland, South
Africa, and even relatively peaceful in Libya.
I recognize the genius in our species and am immensely saddened that we are burning it
all up, for we could have had a long beautiful story... but it does not look very
promising -- when one takes off the rose colored glasses and looks at the hard metrics
of resource depletion; of rates of species extinction.. at what is really going on in
the biosphere of the planet we all live on.
By the way I have long asked that question myself... the answer that seems to make sense
for me is that entropy still prevails in the end -- just give it enough time... lots of
time, but in the meantime, local dysentropy is possible at the cost of increasing the
overall entropy of the containing system.
There's an enormous source of negentropy in sunlight - of which the biosphere is using
only a tiny portion.
I hope we can pull a rabbit out of the hat, or better yet wake up and mend our ways and
begin the hard multi century task of healing the biosphere of the planet that has given
us life.
I also propose that societies should erect a kind of cordon sanitaire around power by
making access to get into the running for elected office be determined by a transparent
& random means. That we need to do something to keep power from becoming monopolized by
a small subset -- the very worst subset -- of the range of human beings.
What do you propose?
Or do you feel that there is no problem?
There have always been problems and every generation has had its doomsayers. I think the
"monopolization of power" is hardly even a problem. Do you want to run the government? I
certainly don't. I'm thankful there are people who want the damn job, and I fully
understand that it's not going to attract the sharpest most ethical people. But those
people aren't evil. They can be educated to see that raising the Earth's temperature
4degC is a really bad idea. They can understand the importance of clean water and air.
They will respond to public pressure, but people have to make democracy work. It doesn't
work just because it's written into the Constitution.
Brent
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