Re: Sustainablity Plan B (and -- perhaps -- meta-plan C)
Jay Hanson wrote: From: Brad McCormick, Ed.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED] A given quantity of stuff is not a constant. That's the point I was trying to make. Technological advance (advance in knowledge in general...) There is no creation of matter/energy Brad. Technology can not repeal the laws of thermodynamics. [snip] Correct, but, like many "correctitudes", misleading. Technology (scientists) *discovered* the laws of thermodynamics (which you wouldn't be talking about if you lived in the 17th century...), and Peter Behrens'/Mies van der Rohe's/ et al. dictum: "less is more" could well be rephrased: Always finding ways to do more with less. If I have one gallon of gasoline and I figure out a way to double the gas mileage of my car, all other things equal, I have doubled my energy reserves. I would agree with you that there are no miracles of loaves and fishes, but the reproduction of *knowledge*, via the printing press, radio, and now FTP (etc.) is for all practical purposes similar (and, in ways, better, since food only meets bodily needs, whereas knowledge can nourish the spirit). A quote from Habermas's _Knowledge and Human Interests_: The systematic sciences of social action, that is economics, sociology... have the goal, as do the empirical-analytic sciences, of producing nomological knowledge. A critical social science, however, will not remain satisfied with this. It is concerned... to determine when theoretical statements grasp invariant regularities of social action as such and when they express ideologically frozen relations of dependence that can in principle be transformed. To the extent that this is the case, the critique of ideology, as well, moreover, as psychoanalysis, take into account that information about lawlike connections sets off a process of reflection in the consciousness of those whom the laws are about. Thus the level of unreflected consciousness, which is one of the initial conditions of such laws, can be transformed. Of course, to this end a critically mediated knowledge of laws cannot through reflection alone render a law itself inoperative, but it can render it inapplicable. (Habermas, 1968/1971, p. 310) I agree with you that we likely are dying off, but that is not the whole story, and even you engage in conversation, so why not think about what you are doing as well as its "content" (the reality of knowing -- "the conversation we are" (Gadamer) -- rather than just the mental constructions of "things known" -- a.k.a. "the universe" etc., which find their place in that reality as topics of conversation)? \brad mccormick -- Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA --- ![%THINK;[SGML]] Visit my website: http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
Re: Sustainablity Plan B (and -- perhaps -- meta-plan C)
Jay Hanson wrote: Is there not confusion within the ranks of our allegedly erudite economic scholars who see only increased production as solution to Social Problems? Obviously, if one can not "grow", then one must "redistribute". That is why it will be opposed to the very bloody end. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED] There is a third option: to reconceptualize, reconfigure, reconstellate, rethink, renew, re-etceteraandsoforth. In a finite world, there is a finite amount of "stuff". I assume that you are suggesting that we talk people out of wanting more stuff? How? Jay
RE: Sustainablity Plan B (and -- perhaps -- meta-plan C)
A given quantity of stuff is not a constant. That's the point I was trying to make. Technological advance (advance in knowledge in general...) enables us to do more/better with the same amount of "stuff". To a denizen of Salem MA in the 18th century, a bit of bread mold was nothing more than occasion for hallucinating. To Arthur Fleming in the 1940s it was occasion for saving millions of lives. (That's not exactly "correct", but it's close enough for my purposes...) The reintrojected projection of "reality" continues to be one of the strongest brakes on humanity's and persons' prospects in life. Again, Castoriadis states all this quite well, e.g., in _Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy_ (although Alain Resnais' film "Mon Oncle d'Amerique" is easier and quicker to "digest", and Edward Hall's _The Silent Language_ is a made in the USA version of the same thesis if one wants to avoid "continental philosophy"). \brad mccormick -- Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA --- ![%THINK;[SGML]] Visit my website == http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Jay Hanson Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 1998 5:50 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Sustainablity Plan B (and -- perhaps -- meta-plan C) Jay Hanson wrote: Is there not confusion within the ranks of our allegedly erudite economic scholars who see only increased production as solution to Social Problems? Obviously, if one can not "grow", then one must "redistribute". That is why it will be opposed to the very bloody end. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED] There is a third option: to reconceptualize, reconfigure, reconstellate, rethink, renew, re-etceteraandsoforth. In a finite world, there is a finite amount of "stuff". I assume that you are suggesting that we talk people out of wanting more stuff? How? Jay
Re: Sustainablity Plan B (and -- perhaps -- meta-plan C)
But why is this all beginning to sound like "original sin?" REH Brad McCormick, Ed.D. wrote: A given quantity of stuff is not a constant. That's the point I was trying to make. Technological advance (advance in knowledge in general...) enables us to do more/better with the same amount of "stuff". To a denizen of Salem MA in the 18th century, a bit of bread mold was nothing more than occasion for hallucinating. To Arthur Fleming in the 1940s it was occasion for saving millions of lives. (That's not exactly "correct", but it's close enough for my purposes...) The reintrojected projection of "reality" continues to be one of the strongest brakes on humanity's and persons' prospects in life. Again, Castoriadis states all this quite well, e.g., in _Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy_ (although Alain Resnais' film "Mon Oncle d'Amerique" is easier and quicker to "digest", and Edward Hall's _The Silent Language_ is a made in the USA version of the same thesis if one wants to avoid "continental philosophy"). \brad mccormick -- Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA --- ![%THINK;[SGML]] Visit my website == http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Jay Hanson Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 1998 5:50 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Sustainablity Plan B (and -- perhaps -- meta-plan C) Jay Hanson wrote: Is there not confusion within the ranks of our allegedly erudite economic scholars who see only increased production as solution to Social Problems? Obviously, if one can not "grow", then one must "redistribute". That is why it will be opposed to the very bloody end. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED] There is a third option: to reconceptualize, reconfigure, reconstellate, rethink, renew, re-etceteraandsoforth. In a finite world, there is a finite amount of "stuff". I assume that you are suggesting that we talk people out of wanting more stuff? How? Jay
Re: Sustainablity Plan B (and -- perhaps -- meta-plan C)
From: Brad McCormick, Ed.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED] A given quantity of stuff is not a constant. That's the point I was trying to make. Technological advance (advance in knowledge in general...) There is no creation of matter/energy Brad. Technology can not repeal the laws of thermodynamics. As a special treat, I just archived a paper by one of our most original thinkers: Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen. See selections from ENERGY AND ECONOMIC MYTHS: Myths about Mankind's Entropic Problem at http://dieoff.com/page148.htm . Here are the first two paragraphs: "Hardly anyone would nowadays openly profess a belief in the immortality of mankind. Yet many of us prefer not to exclude this possibility; to this end, we endeavor to impugn any factor that could limit mankind's life. The most natural rallying idea is that mankind's entropic dowry is virtually inexhaustible, primarily because of man's inherent power to defeat the Entropy Law in some way or another." "To begin with, there is the simple argument that, just as has happened with many natural laws, the laws on which the finiteness of accessible resources rests will be refuted in turn. The difficulty of this historical argument is that history proves with even greater force, first, that in a finite space there can be only a finite amount of low entropy and, second, that low entropy continuously and irrevocably dwindles away. The impossibility of perpetual motion (of both kinds) is as firmly anchored in history as the law of gravitation." It's quite good. Give it a read at http://dieoff.com/page148.htm Jay
Re: Sustainablity Plan B
Jay Hanson wrote, Robert L. Hickerson wrote an interesting piece about M. King Hubbert. Thanks to Jay for bringing up Robert Hickerson's essay on King Hubbert. In connection with my own cause celebre, the reduction of work time, I would be remiss if I failed to point out Hickerson's penultimate paragraph, before his personal conclusions and recommendations: "Hubbert goes on to state that following a transition, the work required of each individual, need be no longer than about 4 hours per day, 164 days per year, from the ages of 25 to 45. Income will continue until death. 'Insecurity of old age is abolished and both saving and insurance become unnecessary and impossible.'" It's also worth noting that Hubbert's analysis comes from his 1936 article "Man Hours -- A Declining Quantity". For those who are familiar with Hubbert's prescient estimates of oil extraction peaks -- obviously a major influence on Jay -- it's interesting to find a very similar analysis applied in the 1936 article on hours as work. In 1948, Hubbert made his first public prediction that U.S. domestic oil production would peak in the late 1960s/early 1970s. But, as quoted by Robert Clark in 1983 interview, "I first worked this out in the middle 1930s but the first time I really wrote it down was for the AAAS convention in 1948." That "middle 1930s" sounds remarkably close to the 1936 publication date of the Man Hours article. I suspect that what Hubbert did was apply the same concept to two facets of the economy -- hours of work and energy supply. I don't want to take anything away from Hubbert's scientific achievements, but it is my contention that Hubbert essentially confirmed ancient traditional wisdom about the perniciousness of compound interest. Hubbert's arc of petroleum depletion is, after all, constructed to illustrate the interaction of two principles: the boundless exponential growth of compound interest and the finite quantity of extractable resources. But, as Hickerson notes in one of his personal conclusions: "Increasingly desperate means will be used by those who think we can continue to have business as usual." An odd thought occurred to me about the 1970 peak of U.S. domestic production. The oil crisis didn't register on the political map and prices of oil didn't go up relatively until the OPEC embargo in October 1973, a full three years after the peak. Meanwhile what emerged as a major political scandal was a "third rate burglary" at the Watergate. Once again, as we approach an even more auspicious global peak, the energy crisis is not on the political map. This time, the headline issue is a blow job. Talk about Nero fiddling while Rome burned. I hear they just named the CIA headquarters after George Bush. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
