The crux, again, is this - you say -
I doubt the
capabilities of our species are any more than any other in the ability
to alter the fundamentals of Life.
- but from everything I've read and researched, this just isn't true.
The disagreement is deep; for one thing I don't feel guilty, but a need to
act. The argument that 'this too shall pass away' can be applied to
anything - seriously, why worry about what ISIS is doing, when ISIS won't
last, any more than we will? Why do anything? I'm not trying to be
specious here; perhaps I feel an urgency that you don't, or an urgency
that involves withdrawal and listening as well as acting; too often fast
actions result in fast disasters...
Again, I may be missing the point (and if I carry decelerationism to the
limit I'll turn into a rock) -
- Alan
On Sun, 24 Apr 2016, John Hopkins wrote:
Hi Alan -
You know well that the diff. between this and the Perm. for example is this
is
the result of a particular species running amuck. And with 40-50 % of ocean
life
scheduled to disappear, etc. as a result of climate, microspherules, etc.,
the
situation is a mess. Yes, there will be something afterwords. But we're
slaughterers trashing the planet, and for me that's unacceptable.
I hear where you are coming from, and no disrespect, just disagreement about
how to act/react.
It's there I disagree -- in the differentiation of us as some special
life-form, separate from everything, above, better at trashing, whatever. We
are doing what Life always does: helping wind down the universe to its heat
death, whatever, by expending available energy to maximize our (Life's!) need
to project itself into the future.
In terms of historical geological epoch, I was not talking about an
extinction event, but more of the geodynamics of Life at that point in
history. Carboniferous coal beds came from a vast anaerobic dead/dying zone
that evolved on Pangea's equatorial region -- as a result of a massive
fluorishing of Life that came from the easy availability of energies at that
time. The life-forms that fluorished in that environment gave their lives
into creating higher-level (energy packaging) hydrocarbon bonds that our
life-form is now releasing, eventually, back into space as waste heat. We are
not special.
Guilt driven by ethereal or unrealized altruism needs to be replaced by
active awareness and actions that the species is capable of. I doubt the
capabilities of our species are any more than any other in the ability to
alter the fundamentals of Life. Consume available energy until it is gone,
then pass away. At best, offer ones own body as sustenance for others to gain
from, for a time, until they too shall pass... etc.
JH
--
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
grounded on a granite batholith
twitter: @neoscenes
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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