(no subject)
So, I'm reading Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, and it is absolutely fascinating. It walks the reader through the mental steps required to arrive at some important conclusions.
1. Man is enacting a story that says the world was made for man. Man is therefore special, and exempt from the laws of nature.
2. Because our story puts as as conquerers of the untamed wild, we inevitably must cast the world as the conquered. The world becomes an enemy to be tamed and overcome.
3. One of the laws that man sees itself exempt from is the law of limited competition. When the food supply increases, so does the population. In attempting to cure starvation by increasing food supply, we only increase population once more. Because the population is not allowed to adjust to its limited resources, famine becomes a staple of the overextended population's life, as we continue to funnel food in from the outside to keep them going.
What is interesting is that from my limited understanding of economics, this seems to be applicable to economic competition as well. Businesses should be able to compete, and when their resources run out they should be allowed to shrink or die. The idea of a company so large that it can't fail is ridiculous. If we funnel money into these companies that have overextended themselves, and exceeded the resources at hand, then we will only be feeding them so that they can grow, and continue to exist in a state of debt.
If we let them perish, then other companies would naturally rise into the gap, hire employees, and rise to their own state of profit. But because we don't, the debt-laden companies continue to live on, unable to support themselves or their employees. They continue to lay people off, reducing their ability to do anything, and still not doing anything to address their mounting debts.
We human beings, or at least the culture of civilization, have set ourselves as enemies of the world, and it is no wonder we are slowly killing it. We see ourselves as exempt from natural laws of competition, and population, and then we wonder how it is that the world suffers, or how it is that our numbers are increasing out of control.
The mother culture we all have been raised with whispers in our ears. Just as it tells us how much eye contact is too much, and what polite driving is (horn use, whether you should merge early/late), it also tells us what to think about the world. We are taught from a young age that the world is wild, chaotic, and scary, and that we humans are able to survive and adapt regardless of what the world throws at us. It teaches us that with us in the driving seat, with our mastery at hand, we will be able to end the chaos of the world and bring it to order. We will learn all the laws necessary to control the oceans and the sky, to bring rain and sunshine as we see fit, to end all natural disasters.
Once we've conquered our planet, we will rise into the sky in starships, advance out as a race of peace and curiousity, meet with the other lifeforms in the universe. Star Trek will come true.
That won't happen though. It can't happen. We are simply not capable of running the world. The world isn't chaos and untamed wild, it is a system that works just as it should. Animals each have their territories, their food supplies, their predators. If the population of the prey grows, so does the population of the predators, until they've reduced the population of the prey. Then, they too will decrease in their population.
We are not content to be subject to those laws. After all, as humans, we are quite sensitive to the idea of human starvation and suffering. But if try to remove the forces that result in the death of humans, we inevitably will end up killing the world. Why? Well, let's try a thought experiment. First, let's remove all the predators who kill people. Okay, so we can continue to prosper until, uh oh! We had too many children, and we've run out of food. Okay, so we have to increase our food supply. We plant and raise food, and we eliminate competitors for it (the bugs that eat our plants, or the wolves that prey on our herds). So now our food supply is increasing, and we don't starve. Except, now our herds have eaten all the grass off the hillsides (their food supply), and the large field full of plants have all been harvested. So we clear out some trees and make more grassy fields and more farm plots. And the more we increase our food supply, the more we have to kill off those species which eat what we eat, or are not edible themselves, or do not feed what we eat.
The only answer seems to be birth control, and yet that is always a promise that never comes. Starvation is now, so we try to feed those who starve, and yet we are not making any of them promise not to reproduce. And then if you think to yourself about overpopulation, Mother Culture whispers in our ears, "don't worry, child, we will establish world population control," and yet it never comes.
Either we need to stop having so many goddamn children, or we need to stop making so much food. The only way to not have starvation is to exist within our means, and that means having less people than we can support. I am not sure if we have that self control, but that is what it would take, I believe.
1. Man is enacting a story that says the world was made for man. Man is therefore special, and exempt from the laws of nature.
2. Because our story puts as as conquerers of the untamed wild, we inevitably must cast the world as the conquered. The world becomes an enemy to be tamed and overcome.
3. One of the laws that man sees itself exempt from is the law of limited competition. When the food supply increases, so does the population. In attempting to cure starvation by increasing food supply, we only increase population once more. Because the population is not allowed to adjust to its limited resources, famine becomes a staple of the overextended population's life, as we continue to funnel food in from the outside to keep them going.
What is interesting is that from my limited understanding of economics, this seems to be applicable to economic competition as well. Businesses should be able to compete, and when their resources run out they should be allowed to shrink or die. The idea of a company so large that it can't fail is ridiculous. If we funnel money into these companies that have overextended themselves, and exceeded the resources at hand, then we will only be feeding them so that they can grow, and continue to exist in a state of debt.
If we let them perish, then other companies would naturally rise into the gap, hire employees, and rise to their own state of profit. But because we don't, the debt-laden companies continue to live on, unable to support themselves or their employees. They continue to lay people off, reducing their ability to do anything, and still not doing anything to address their mounting debts.
We human beings, or at least the culture of civilization, have set ourselves as enemies of the world, and it is no wonder we are slowly killing it. We see ourselves as exempt from natural laws of competition, and population, and then we wonder how it is that the world suffers, or how it is that our numbers are increasing out of control.
The mother culture we all have been raised with whispers in our ears. Just as it tells us how much eye contact is too much, and what polite driving is (horn use, whether you should merge early/late), it also tells us what to think about the world. We are taught from a young age that the world is wild, chaotic, and scary, and that we humans are able to survive and adapt regardless of what the world throws at us. It teaches us that with us in the driving seat, with our mastery at hand, we will be able to end the chaos of the world and bring it to order. We will learn all the laws necessary to control the oceans and the sky, to bring rain and sunshine as we see fit, to end all natural disasters.
Once we've conquered our planet, we will rise into the sky in starships, advance out as a race of peace and curiousity, meet with the other lifeforms in the universe. Star Trek will come true.
That won't happen though. It can't happen. We are simply not capable of running the world. The world isn't chaos and untamed wild, it is a system that works just as it should. Animals each have their territories, their food supplies, their predators. If the population of the prey grows, so does the population of the predators, until they've reduced the population of the prey. Then, they too will decrease in their population.
We are not content to be subject to those laws. After all, as humans, we are quite sensitive to the idea of human starvation and suffering. But if try to remove the forces that result in the death of humans, we inevitably will end up killing the world. Why? Well, let's try a thought experiment. First, let's remove all the predators who kill people. Okay, so we can continue to prosper until, uh oh! We had too many children, and we've run out of food. Okay, so we have to increase our food supply. We plant and raise food, and we eliminate competitors for it (the bugs that eat our plants, or the wolves that prey on our herds). So now our food supply is increasing, and we don't starve. Except, now our herds have eaten all the grass off the hillsides (their food supply), and the large field full of plants have all been harvested. So we clear out some trees and make more grassy fields and more farm plots. And the more we increase our food supply, the more we have to kill off those species which eat what we eat, or are not edible themselves, or do not feed what we eat.
The only answer seems to be birth control, and yet that is always a promise that never comes. Starvation is now, so we try to feed those who starve, and yet we are not making any of them promise not to reproduce. And then if you think to yourself about overpopulation, Mother Culture whispers in our ears, "don't worry, child, we will establish world population control," and yet it never comes.
Either we need to stop having so many goddamn children, or we need to stop making so much food. The only way to not have starvation is to exist within our means, and that means having less people than we can support. I am not sure if we have that self control, but that is what it would take, I believe.