Glen/Marcus/et alia -
I have of late, been trying to understand a little more deeply the
concept of "Enlightened Self Interest", mostly as it applies to me
personally, but by extension how it applies to my identity groups
(family, neighbors, region, culture, nation, species, sapients-at-large,
life-that-plays, life in all it's forms, pan-conscious matter, et/ad,
cet/naus).
In /Out of My Life and Thought/ Schweitzer wrote:
The most immediate fact of man’s consciousness is the assertion
"I am life that wills to live in the midst of life that wills to
live"
— Albert Schweitzer
I find this particular observation/assertion by Schweitzer nicely poetic
in it's self-referentiality, but also quite apt toward my apprehension
of "what is life?" and just how far must/might I extend my
"self-interest" to be properly enlightened.
Since the beginning of the Holocene (by definition), we humans have been
adapting our environment to our (presumed) liking at a monotonically
increasing (and concave up if not precisely geometric nor exponential?)
rate. I'm not needing to invoke Singularian concepts to suggest that
we are (and have been for some time) out-driving our headlights. For
all of our abilities in predictive science and constructive engineering,
there are always "unintended consequences". Even in a clockwork
universe, we must live with "the halting problem" whence the only way to
know for sure how things are going to turn out is to watch them evolve
into their fullness over time.
It is not surprising (to me) that at every turn our "best ideas" turn
out to have "hidden gotchas".... that building a global civilization
predicated on a constant expansion of resource exploitation (first
forests and prairies, then clean water sources, then coal, oil, and gas
deposits) eventually hits a limit. Hubbert's "Peak Oil"
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil> didn't even consider (or was
aware of?) the consequences of greenhouse gas buildup and climate
change. Hubbert's predictions seem to have borne out pretty well in
the US until we figured out "hydraulic fracturing" (see upturn in green
line)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil>
It is also not surprising (to me) that Free Markets and Capitalism and
even Representative Democracy are loaded with unintended consequences
and that we are very naturally faced with the possibility that they are
fundamentally flawed in ways we might only be starting to understand.
I'm not advocating a return to *earlier* flawed systems (e.g.
autocratic/fuedal/fascist/???) but rather a *continued* reflection and
refinement on WHAT MEANS "enlightened"? And what are the boundaries of
"self".
In the thread I bent/hijacked here, I would cynically claim that Marcus
was trying to find relief in some of these paradoxes by gerrymandering
"selfness"... and Glen holding the line on a more holistic view of
systems.
A great deal of our problems in the world seem to arise out of shifting
definitions of "self". The populism in the first world that recently
exhibits as xenophobia, whitelash, etc. is precisely that. I think
it is built into us as humans/mammals/vertebrates/life-itself to be
self-centered, to look after our own personal well-being before we look
to that of others. Our tribal/clan dunbar-number-scale affinities may
cause us to be locally altruistic at times and look after
family/friends/neighbors/tribe before ourselves, but beyond that our
instincts are xenophobic. It takes more careful thought to extend
one's enlightenment very far I suspect.
In this globally connected world we have built (it has always been a
single whole, but with transportation and communication, we have
short-circuited a lot of the existing feedback loops in "nature" with
our own) it is likely that our instincts aren't even close to being
on-mark. At best, we need to be very careful (IMO) at how we define
"self" as we pursue "enlightened self-interest". We have collectively
shown a great amount of disregard for the subjects of our exploitation
and colonization over the centuries, and in some cases, that is coming
back to bite us hard with terrorism, but maybe more significantly in the
form of mass refugee movements. In a yet-larger scope, our
abuses/exploitation of other species and even the very geology of the
planet have lead to unintended consequences (local diversification and
ecological collapses, and now global climate change), yet one common
response is to just "push harder".
Perhaps that is all we are geared to do... if something isn't
working... push harder? History suggests that this (almost) works for
(a subset of) the population which survives today. Maybe there will be
a Muskian civilization on Mars or in the Asteroid Belt or even the Moon
or LEO space habitats. Maybe there will be bubbled cities on the ocean
floor or underground or even on the surface, where the ultimate in
"gated communities" survive. And some vestigal collapsed ecosystem
which, if our lucky bubble-people can leave it alone will return to some
kind of robust and diverse equilibrium over some (long by human
attention standards) time.
Looking more closely for the first time at Carbon Footprints and
per-Capita budgets... I'm appalled to realize that the USA and the first
world in general are at 10-20x what is considered sustainable for the
planet and that even the least developed (China/India) are over the
limit and heading toward our standard as fast as possible.
Here is a very accessible (and I hope not too naive or inaccurate)
resource that provides an interesting summary:
http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/carbon-targets-for-your-footprint
with a 4 ton footprint (1/4 our average but 4x what might be needed) we
see estimates like:
*Housing: * 1.04 t = 1500 kWh of US grid electricity
*Travel:* 0.94 t = 2000 miles driving at 20 MPG
*Food:* 1.1 t = a mostly vegan diet with limited food waste
*Products:* 0.51 t = $1000 worth of products
*Services: * 0.4 t = $2000 worth of services
Which only a truly homeless person today can beat by much? Maybe the
demi-wealthy (read most of us here, even if you think you aren't) can
game this a little by installing PV on our homes, replace our ICE
vehicles with EVs (hybrids in the interim) that double or quadruple our
vehicular travel range, grow some of our own food (I think most of the
1.1 t is commercial farming techniques and transportation) and pick and
choose the products and services we feel we need to match our ethical
ideals.
I've rambled enough here...
Carry on,
- Steve
On 9/10/17 12:05 PM, ┣glen┫ wrote:
On 09/10/2017 10:12 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
It is not necessarily the case that `we' are a whole and must look after one
another. The population can be partitioned into compartmentalized subsets.
You're conflating willing payment with unforeseen consequences. When we don't look after one
another purposefully, we end up "looking after one another" in the form of systemic
damage to the whole system. So, while you're right that we don't have to pay attention,
purposefully, to risk pools, the costs will always be present. By paying attention to it, the
argument goes, we lessen the overall damage, at the cost of the "redistribution wealth"
the right wingers are so afraid of.
So, you're wrong in the naive assertion. It is not merely necessary, it is THE CASE that
we are a whole and always "look after one another", in the end. The question
is about when to do the looking ... before or after bad things happen.
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
