Bacillus23
I tend to generally keep my mouth shut on this subject for fear of sounding a kook (and for the sake of managing a sub-threshold paranoia), but I did write this a few months ago, albeit in a rather glum/silly/mashed mood.
I think there is a threshold sensitivity — concrete:green brain ratio — that when exceeded, results in woowoos, which in turn can escalate into bad shit. Bacterial community integrity aside, people in the developed world are massively unaware of the systems of life that sustain them, except that cuutesy stuff on the obliviance projecter. (This is sometimes O.K., when it features dolphins.)
They effectively perceive It as one huge, Cartesian, “Stuff comes to me if I smile and kick it nice” machine, completely unaware of the vast, throbbing, dynamic, complex-adaptive-system, that leads to their buttered toast. That’s great for them (…or rather not), but desperate news for the biosphere.
I hate to sound the pessimist, but I don’t believe top-down government is inclined, aware, or even in a position to promote the kind of radical paradigm shift that is required to stun our runaway growth. Also, the tenured, solvent classes will not give up their hold on their “right” to control or decide — not easily.
I suspect the vast system of vested interests, which has entrenched itself, inevitably, in our world and insidiously in our collective parsings, is paying close attention to such ‘sub’-cultural anxieties. The fences are going up; resources are being hoarded; and martial plans are likely already written. Or, more viciously:
On the positive side, the memetic necessities required of such a paradigm shift are slowly (but surely) establishing themselves credible at the other end of the political continuum — i.e., in the ‘sub’-cultures and the individual. Let’s hope our masters refrain from making too much of a mess in the meantime.
I suppose we can only hope that this fascinating self-awareness and self-reflectiveness of ours actually means something, being as it is at the wave-front of material evolution: the effervescing limen of novelty. I’ve always been fascinated by technological progress, but as I’ve grown older my biophilic and Luddite traits have come ever closer to the fore — for pragmatic reasons as much as idealist ones. The biosphere is failing (of that I have no doubt), regardless of the apocalyptic sidelines of global warming and oil depletion, etc.
The environment is rotten. When whales are classified as “toxic waste” because of volatile organic contaminants, bees begin randomly dying, oceanic dead zones thicken, spread, and entrench themselves, permanently — and, you name it — it’s more than messy. Complex systems require diversity to sustain and that diversity has been decimated. Every species lost and every habitat ravaged leads us (Disseminated Primatemaia) closer to collapse.
Bacillus23. [[Comment_on_Leyli_Cecil--Blog--2008-06-18?|October 6th, 2008]].