Ecological Morality

On the evolution of compassion: youtube.com/watch?v=N4wFyRGilp4 We’re in a race between the expansion of zero sum-ness and our capacity for destruction of the environment we live in.

Thanks, Felix. That is a good reference to the human dilemma. Isn’t the concept of the enemy also a genetic/memetic outcome? Is it zero sum position?

If you can read and understand Dowd and Pinker, you are certainly not an idiot.

Society is an abstract contributor to the problem of man’s inhumanity to man. Anarchy may reveal the problem but offers no remedy for it. The roots of the problem are to be found in the evolution of genes and social memes. We need to foster memes of empathy and compassion toward each other in order to challenge our genetic heritage.

Good to see you are still around. What will it take for us to realize that we are consuming ourselves out of existence?

Probably a catastrophe or even a major series of catastrophes that involve large segments of the world’s human population. I mean you would think that the 6th Great Extinction would be enough. But people are consumed with their narrow self-interests. In the year 2020 the best thing Americans can do for the environment is to vote Donald Trump out of office and vote in a president who will reverse his destructive environmental policy and institute a more aggressive policy of international cooperation to curb climate change then has been previously proposed.

Australians are calling for changes as a result of the fires.

Flooding in Canada produced a similar call for changes. Once-in-a-hundred-years floods are happening every 5 years.

Who knows how much traction that will get or how long it will last.

When an economy is good people tend to forget ecological morality. We now have a decent economy in the U.S along with a president who does not believe in the science of global warming. But a price will have to be paid for getting the goods at the expense of Nature. The hubris of having is yet to meet the nemesis of depravation. It is good to see there are some countries realize this and are seeking to address the old Man holds dominion over Nature lie of exploitation.

Ideas from religions of the past may be enjoying a new presence as many take a good look at the price of our exploitation of Nature and have hopes for a decent future for mankind. Pinker and others have written of tremendous progress in goods and services for people since the enlightenment. Problem is the progress excludes indigenous people.

The unavoidable consumption is food and sustenance. And the need for shelter. And all that it takes to deliver and provide it.

Danial Quinn explains this relationship in his Ishmael series, and The Story of B ; the relationship between food and population ; basically, more food produces more population, and more consumers.

So, at bottom, we’re eating ourselves to extinction. Or, when we reach a time when we can’t produce more food, the population will level off – as with all the critters, population is controlled by available food – and consumption will level off.

I think we screwed up by removing ourselves from the food chain.

Speaking of shelter:

money.cnn.com/2014/06/04/real_e … home-size/

darrinqualman.com/house-size/

Totally unsustainable.

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True true but without systemic change of the nation states on a global level individual sacrifice will never be enough. So we must do what we can to change the system.

If enough individuals change, then the system will change.

Nations are not going to change until the general population changes.

Only 11 Years Left to Prevent Irreversible Damage from Climate Change, Speakers Warn during General Assembly High-Level Meeting [at UN]

https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/ga12131.doc.htm

theguardian.com/environment … ional-poll

What struck me as noteworthy in this article is the mention of a large amount of food wasted while billions go hungry. This shows the extravagance of consumerism and the lack of care for others it generates. I do think wastes of consumerism is more of a problem than is the Malthusian scare about population exceeding the food supply. Some countries, China I believe, are already practicing ZPG.
More is the consumer’s mantra, more things, bigger and better things, etc. Fewer people can opt for more things!

I have to admit that I smoke a bowl to dull the impact of hopelessness in the face of this world. Shame shame, I feel for escaping.

With a 97% scientific consensus, that human activity is behind climate change, with little willingness to do much about it from power brokers, that could do something about it, what can I hope to do?

So daily I look out into this world, and cry. And I cry for my contribution to it. I conclude that if I really want to do my part, the best thing I could do is kill myself.

Hello!

youtube.com/watch?v=uaWA2GbcnJU

That’s pretty extreme.

Maybe there is some scope for action somewhere between doing nothing and killing yourself.