At 08:46 AM 10/18/97 -0500, "Thomas Lunde" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>U.S. drivers are burning record amounts of gasoline this year. They are
>encouraged by a strong economy to go out on the road, and increasingly,
>they are turning to vehicles with more zip and less fuel efficiency.
Well, obviously it IS insanity. Se my "Fossilgate" (updated
recently) at: http://dieoff.org/page122.htm
But the real question is: "When we are forced by natural laws
to abandon our 'maximize GDP' insanity, what's to keep us from
leaping to another insanity -- perhaps even more bizarre than
this one?"
For several years now, I have been trying to figure out WHY
people act the way they do. I am not particularly interested
in human thoughts, social theories or rationalizations. I am
interested in BEHAVIOR.
Economists and politicians prefer to see people as little more
than computers made out of meat. They are either mazimizing
utility, or making so-called rational choices in the voting
booths. In other words, they get what they deserve.
But behaviorial scientists have discovered that pople are NOT
computers, people are ANIMALS! <G>
People, like all animals, were optimized by evolution to put their
genes into the next generation. Those strains of humans that
were not so optimized, are no longer here.
Three of the most important social characteristics that allow
people to put their genes into the next generation are:
exploitation (making the best use of something -- including other
people), lying (I love you, so let's go to bed), and self-deception
(I will never leave her for younger woman). Exploitation and lying
contributed to human survival for millions of years,
self-deception for about 40,000 years.
For millions of years, humans LIVED the Tragedy of the Commons.
Hunter gathers exploited an area -- literally ATE themselves out
of an area -- and then moved to a new one.
The !Kung bushmen are still doing it:
"As one might expect, the bushmen prefer to collect the desirable
foods that are closest to the water supply. They occupy a camp
for a period of weeks and literally eat their way out of it. For
example, they often camp in the nut forests and exhaust the nuts
within a 1.6 km radius during the first week of occupation,
within a 3.2 km > radius the second week, and within a 4.8 km
radius the third week." (Lee, 1969, cited in Pimentel, 1996)
Humans adopted settled agriculture ONLY about 12,000 years ago.
In other words, humans are still evolved and optimized as hunter
gatherers and have simply not had enough time to evolve and adapt
for survival at present (and expected) population densities like,
say, termites.
The reason that people have become so self-destructive, is because
of their innate technology: large brains, opposing thumbs, and
vocal ability.
I think it is genetically impossible for humans to govern for the
common good. Humans are genetically programmed to lie, exploit
-- and then lie to themselves -- until they crash and die off.
FUTUREWORLD
Feral children mining the dumps for plastic to burn (Pampers) so they
can heat the holes they live in. Roadside Warriors gone mad, killing,
raping, and torturing. Pandemics sweeping the world, punctuated every
so often by explosions as abandoned nuke plants go critical. Leaking
dumps, tanks, chemical fires, blowing garbage and trash, genetic
mutations, filthy water, cannibalism ...
A hundred thousand years from now, as the new radiation-hardened
species of humans emerge from the caves, the will elect a new leader.
The winner will run on a platform to end hunger by controlling nature.
How could it be otherwise?
POST-INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS
"In this curious society which seems to have bypassed Karl Marx in
economics, there is one common value, apart from language, to
which all Ik hold tenaciously. It is ngag, 'food.' This is not a
cynical quip—there is no room for cynicism with the Ik. It is
clearly stated by the Ik themselves in their daily conversation,
in their rationale for action and thought. It is the one standard
by which they measure right and wrong, goodness and badness. The
very word for 'good,' marang, is defined in terms of food.
'Goodness,' marangik, is defined simply as 'food,' or, if you
press, this will be clarified as 'the possession of food,' and
still further clarified as "individual possession of food." Then
if you try the word as an adjective and attempt to discover what
their concept is of a 'good man,' iakw anamarang, hoping that the
answer will be that a good man is a man who helps you fill your
own stomach, you get the truly Icien answer: a good man is one
who has a full stomach. There is goodness in being, but none in
doing, at least not in doing to others.
"So we should not be surprised when the mother throws her child
out at three years old. She has breast-fed it, with some ill
humor, and cared for it in some manner for three whole years, and
now it is ready to make its own way. I imagine the child must be
rather relieved to be thrown out, for in the process of being
cared for he or she is carried about in a hide sling wherever the
mother goes, and since the mother is not strong herself this is
done grudgingly. Whenever the mother finds a spot in which to
gather, or if she is at a water hole or in her fields, she
loosens the sling and lets the baby to the ground none too
slowly, and of course laughs if it is hurt. I have seen Bila and
Matsui do this many a time. Then she goes about her business,
leaving the child there, almost hoping that some predator will
come along and carry it off. This happened once while I was
there—once that I know of, anyway—and the mother was delighted.
She was rid of the child and no longer had to carry it about and
feed it, and still further this meant that a leopard was in the
vicinity and would be sleeping the child off and thus be an easy
kill. The men set off and found the leopard, which had consumed
all of the child except part of the skull; they killed the
leopard and cooked it and ate it, child and all. That is Icien
economy, and it makes sense in its own way." [Turnbull, 1972]
People are not computers, people are lying, exploiting self-
decieving animals. People could be nothing more that exploiting,
lying, reproducing automations -- with no motives whatsoever
other than to fulfill their genetic programming -- and still
achieve the same future.
Jay -- http://dieoff.org
