(also SCROLL DOWN)
March 2, 2001 Science Magazine, Vol 291, Issue 5509, 1722-1725
In Search of the First Europeans
Michael Balter
Who were the first people to set foot in Europe--and why did it take them so long to get there?
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[UNMAINTAINABILITY] Because of a naturally uneven distribution of the resources fundamental to the human life-form, and because of population growth and the way 'the world aristocracy of ignorantly autonomous peoples and nations' (-2005) has so far used those natural resources(*q) -'sustainable resource use' corrupted, and general citizenry become operationally and intellectually inept by 'successive subspeciation(*g) under economic growth', there is some great probability that 'general well-being and civilizational integrity' two to three generations from now (2040-50) will be manifest in a chaotic descent from otherwise classical 'lower animal' econiche saturation into classical dynamic stability -overpopulation and economic growth attritioning into (a) 'citadel aristocracies' at the tops of nations variously controlling critical natural resources among themselves, (b) an ungovernable, triage-abandoned mass 'making-do as best it can' scrabble dying out the bottom (Haiti -2004), and (c) a successively unemployable drone/burden population from top to bottom suffering (i) the unmaintainability of 'once 2005 lifestyle and quality of life' and (ii) a breakdown of civilizational infrastructure, institutions and government about them. |
[BOTTOM-UP DIE-OUT] The likelihood developed here is that there will not have been enough 'forward-looking anthropologically integral progress' made by 2040-50 to have offset the primary factor leading to 'the absence of sustainable resource use' at that time, namely, the momentum of world population disposed to diasporative use of the resource/environment carrying overpopulation into a de-facto now-manifest saturation of the resource/environment -there having been no way to access and institutionalize off-setting knowledge in A World Democracy Of Ignorantly Autonomous Peoples And Nations(*s) so disposed.
Argued further then, is that scientists of primarily western democracy (European federation, in particular) will 'come to the rescue' by intruding upon government -but NOT before massive ecological collapses thruout the world are rippling
hierarchically downward into a breakdown of all but the most self-sustaining societies -populations and their 'qualities of life' collapsing in accordance -aristocracy ('western democracy' in particular) and 'national autonomy', the key
phrases, and 'momentum of classical, lower animal saturation' by H sapiens, the overwhelming agency. |
'Gross demographic changes' is limited in practicality here to the window of the next 40 to 50 years (2040-50) -the two to three generations of manifestly existing and 'projectable' humans not uncommon in government planning (example
-*3). The general conclusion then, is that because the physical and intellectual dispositions of mankind today are still essentially those of 'a warm-blooded merely cerebrating vertebrate diasporatively inhabiting an econiche new to it' (the
earth), the momentum of 'population growth and degradational use of the resource/environment' will not have made possible anything of a meaningful 'sustainable resource' into that period of time.
(*i) The basic premise underlying 'sustainable resource use' then, is that there is some combination of population mental and physical constitutions and demographics that is best consistent with both the planet's natural
resources and the 'best well-being and viability of the organism-whole', thus-
-definition-
[It is -literally, impossible to discuss the material of this essay in other than textural terms, thus 'unnatural' live resources become or made so by 'unnatural' influence -genetic modification, for example, may well go on to become
resources in overall evolutionally integral biomes -more or less consistent the definition above. What is crucially more important ('better science') here, is that we do not discount the information existing in
resources already integral of 'dynamically stable biome life' today in favor of 'inherently reduced and skewed information circumstantially evolving out of imprudent, unnatural influence of only perhaps such integrity and
stability'.]
The material of this essay title becomes successively daunting as one digs into 'resolution' and finds himself lost in what Garrett Hardin titled The Tragedy of the Commons. But the problem is addressable and resolvable
-it depends only upon the related environmental biologists and anthropologists, and subsequently scientists in general, to rise to themselves being the inevitable 'agency of resolution'.)
Following next are several high-order items that should be considered as more or less couching any proper analysis. They identify, so to speak, a configuration-space or extraterrestrial view of some of the more important characteristics of mankind as a
thus-far evolved, proliferating and interacting life-form on the planet.
1 - Paleontology has found that the appearances and evolutions of various 'types' of organisms (physical characteristics and properties) typically have 'geological time-frame's associable them. The peculiarity of 'the human life-form' however, is
that not only did its appearance toggle a new 'time-frame', but it did so -because of his deliberative capability, with potential corruptions of planetary proportions -atmospheric properties,
continental and oceanic and freshwater integrities, and annihilation of complete ecosystems -a geological time-frame, in other words, of complexity perhaps well beyond
his ever 'encompassing' it.
2 - Every life-form has an envelope of discretely physical, environment properties associable it, a multi-dimensional envelope within which the organism is moved (or moves) by ecological dynamics and in which, 'not knowing the difference', it
becomes inured, classically, to sometimes worsened conditions. Thus, for example, there is some good chance that humankind may be unable to alleviate the massive consequences of greenhouse gases release it
became used to thru the massive use of fossil fuels and deforestation.
(*1)
3 - Primitively inherent of 'pecking order and eventual aristocracy' (below) was the evolution (ideation) of 'value' the peculiarity of which is that one's 'worth' -congregational and 'higher', typically depends upon the 'nature of
his subspeciation'(*g) rather than upon any 'validity of existence' -the commonality of the argument, therefore (a value 'pronouncement'), that (eg) "Anyone can do what the trash collector does, but I am a pediatrician and far more valuable for my long education and what far fewer can do" -untrue in a government/economy of 'sustainable resource use and NO diasporatively cheap natural resources and labor'.
4 - It is a fact of our 'only thus-far intellectual evolution' that we try to make our lives as 'comfortable and fun' possible with as little effort possible (example -more below); globalization and 'the superiority of
the United States of America', in this respect, has everyone in the world a 'wannabe to our value-based worth by ownership'(*q) that churns and only further complicates the difficulty of 'sustainable
resource use' thruout the world.
[Intrinsic here, is the subject of economics and the general matter of economic relationships between individuals, peoples and nations, the whole of which intimately ties the existence of every anyone ever born and/or yet to be
born and the nature-in-detail of the earth -his configuration space, for all its (a) various planetary properties and dynamics and (b) its various life-forms and their evolutionary properties. (This is continued in Appendix 2, A Note on
'Economic Growth'(*l).]
5 - The whole idea of 'capitalism, free enterprise, the financial market, stock ownership' et cetera, is fundamentally incompatible with sustainable resource use except as an extant circumstantiality of 'getting
from here to there': sustainable resource use is wholly and solely scientific and heuristic(*i) in its various elements of discovery, analysis, modeling, projection and 'correction'; 'capitalism et cetera' is merely
institutionalized pecking order.
6 - Because of deliberative capability, H sapiens cannot but be viewed in the anthropological sense of an evolving, perhaps 'end of the line' life-form -which means then, that the 'peculiarities' of
thus-far mankind -his idiomatics -'aristocratics' in particular- cannot but eventually be formally, scientifically and deliberately 'extinguished'. Clearly then, the higher one is
in any 'ignorant-of-science aristocracy', the more unwilling will be his accession to the intellectual commonality intrinsic the viability of an inevitable H cogitans(*w).
7 - There are only solar energy, fossil energy and nuclear or related such energy that man discovers accessible. And when the discoveries and 'easily available' fossil peter out, there is left only what biomass the sun
'grows' -'provided, of course, that there is water -and the temperature is right -and the air clean enough'. -The peculiarity of nuclear energy, furthermore -thus-far mentality, is that its comparatively long-term, high-volume efficiency actually works
to prolong overpopulation and further corruption of resource/environment integrity.
8 - It is a fact of classical evolutionary process that 'sustainable resource use' will entail 'an attrition(*t) of overpopulated resource/environment use' determined by (a) how
'institutionalized aristocratic power(*n) accedes to scientific knowledge', (b) what the natures of the various resource/environments and their uses are in 'the aristocracy of individuals, peoples and
nations' (scroll down -*q) and (c) the 'system of momentums' in this (below) -the whole of which determines (sustainable resource use) the nature of population reduction -and 'lifestyle and the quality of life' in that
reduction.
9 - The 'world democracy of ignorantly autonomous peoples and nations' is very much 'an econiche of various evolutionally and ecologically related organisms'. That world democracy (ecosystem) changes, consequently, as a function of how
those individual organisms affect their discrete (sub-)econiches and how those affects in turn affect the dynamics of other organisms and the whole. -Thus the 'best well-being and viability' of a people or nation depends upon (a) the nature of its
dependence upon its own 'sustainable resource use' and (b) how what it brings to that 'table of the organism-whole' -and its availability, 'sits' on that table -how the world's depletion of Gabon's oil may well 'beggar' it into
nonexistence, for example.
10 - For any 'descent into dynamic stability by a warm-blooded, merely cerebrating vertebrate' -econiche support failing overpopulation- (classical) 'natural selection generally operates to drop the genetically or circumstantially
unable-to-cope out the bottom'. Humans, so far however, have only 'aristocracy' as criterion -all, feral/intelligently the same otherwise, but 'subspeciated and aristocratically so'. What this means is that more likely than 'a
smooth descent into stability' is a 'wildly ringing' and perhaps even ungovernable descent variously convulsed by (a) absolute unemployability, (b) 'idlemind time that cannot be meritably occupied', (c) simple ineptitude at
maintaining 'well-being and quality of life under attrition', and (d) an aging whole 'natural-selecting out the bottom'.
11 - It is the further peculiarity of man that the 'machine that goes by itself'-edness of his deliberative capability is able to compound relationals (mathematics, for example) in such
successive way as to outrun the rate-limited(*z) brain-and-body ability of even some H cogitans(*w) to practicably contain such compound -with the result that he has no choice but to subspeciate at least
intellectually -and perhaps -eventually, physically and genetically too.
12 - Energy and water are both existentially and momently fundamental to this organism. 'Best well-being and viability of the life-form', therefore, depends crucially upon understanding the dynamics of their availabilities and human
use -and control thereof in that respect. What this means for 'a world democracy of ignorantly autonomous peoples and nations and the inevitability of economic attrition into dynamic stability' is that the only problem to be addressed is 'the
quantity, quality and distribution of ecological collapse and human misery attaching it'.
13 - There is, lastly, not only a momentum to 'the human phenomenon and things human', to the dynamics of 'the world democracy of ignorantly autonomous peoples and nations', but a certainty of that momentum by fact of its various
codifications -laws, rules and regulations -governments, agencies, armies, industries, businesses, religions, organizations and families, national and international -an evolving and imperfectly integrated working-whole -all the more
difficult to bring under attrition.
'Sustainable resource use' then, identifies a dynamically evolving situation which is defined solely by what best knowledge there is regarding the nature of the human organism as 'a life-form of deliberative capability discovering the
nature of its existence in a fixed configuration space', a life-form that -pecking-order-based at this time, is operationally more related to its 'time-stuck ancestors' (example -*e) than to some H cogitans(*w)
capable of the heuristics intrinsic of 'sustainable resource use': simply put-
It is, more specifically and so far, the situation of 'an organism of evolving deliberative capability more or less circumstantially diasporating into an econiche of widely varying(*p), evolvingly intellectualizable,
life-supporting conditions' -a mankind of 'individuals, peoples and nations' eventually, in which various of those principals have come to 'advantage' themselves at the expense of others without consideration of either the sustainability of such advantage or its impacts upon the whole -a matter, in other words, of mankind's 'only thus-far intellectual evolution'.
Following next is a progression which takes us from 'the appearance of a new life-form' in general, into 'the nature of sustainable resource use' as inevitably to be determined by mankind, the only principal of the phrase's definition and
meaning.
1 - Every organism new to an econiche proliferates (diasporation) by 'eating' its way into it until (saturation) the econiche fails to support 'overpopulation'; natural selection continuing then, the
whole settles down as an econiche of new ecological constitution and new dynamic stability(*y).
2 - Warm-blooded animal viability is a function of (among other things) (i) 'congregational sexuality', and (ii) 'cerebration in relationals' which is a rate-limited(*z)
property that effectively 'subspeciates' an organism by fact of differences of capability in interactions with the resource/environment -'pecking order (next), and generic cooperation and democracy' therein (below).
3 - Pecking order is an evolved, genetically-based property of warm-blooded vertebrates which is generally identifiable by
[To one degree or another, in other words, one (thus-far) pecking-order-based human 'succeeds' with respect to another -'deliberate least effort overall', by doing whatever he can to increase, or at least maintain, his 'well-being, lifestyle and
quality of life' by cooperation 'as necessary' and manipulation 'as practical' (more below).]
4 - Deliberative capability facilitates successively 'higher-order, more efficient use' of the resource/environment than that possible by 'lesser, merely cerebrating organisms' in general -'pecking-order-based
expression'(*q) an additional consequence -'aristocracy' expediting and smearing diasporation into econiche saturation and 'corrupting' classical dynamic stability(*y).
[Clearly identifying the latter at this time, we have (a) the hard evidence of extinctions wrought by 'deliberatively and efficiently interactive man', (b) the hard evidence of econiche-local 'dynamic stabilities under
corruption' today (The State of the Planet), and (c) statistical tools for quantifying the degree to which we are elements of that corruption as individuals, peoples and nations.]
5 - Institutionalized 'aristocracy' diasporating (then), 'a world aristocracy of autonomous peoples and nations' is a natural, successively higher-order consequence of widely-varying resource/environments -peoples and
nations effectively subspeciated (scroll down -*q) by environment, culture, knowledge, government, economy, 'quality of life' et cetera.
[The substance of life at this diasporating/saturating stage remains fundamentally 'organic, quotidial and pecking-order-based' thruout the world however -the food, shelter and companionship of the primitive hominid's 24-hour-day -and the
value-based expression(*q) of 'success' and idle-mind time-and-occupation -implications and consequences of which (beyond that time) remain of 'thus-far existential disinterest and
intellectual inaccessibility'.]
6 - The whole of the above ('the human phenomenon and things human') exists out of a certain predictability and routine(*v). There is, therefore, a momentum to it which propagates
'pecking-order-based use' into 'continuing perturbation of classical saturation and dynamic stability' -except as more or less deliberatively modified by knowledge and capability.
[In one sense or another then, 'the human phenomenon and things human' is 'a machine of daily-routines-and-momentum that goes by itself', routines that are NOT easy to change -the gigantic momentum, therefore, of over 6 billion people and their
various hierarchies 'inadvertently overpopulating(*m) and degrading potential use of the resource/environment-whole'. "Do we need all these people? If they didn't exist, would we have the problems we do?" -The certainty
is that some H cogitans(*w) of the future will still be spread over the earth, but in far, far fewer numbers of significantly more efficient consolidation -the 'economic growth'
of civilization today -buildings, roads, institutions, government et cetera, all superfluous, extraneous and wasted out of the 'best well-being and viability' of that life-form.]
7 - Genetic imperative drives the life-form to survive, and deliberative capability drives it into understanding 'the nature of itself in its configuration space'. The two combine then
(ineluctably -*o), to optimize the 'heuristics of viability' out of (by) 'stabilizing both itself and that resource/environment' -no 'pecking order', no 'idiomatics', no noumenalisms, no nothing.
['Dynamic stability and sustainable resource use' of some kind is inevitable even if only by 'eating our way into it like T rex -against the wall by saturation'. Be that what it be, likely here is that the momentum
of largely unmanipulable, currently existing 'knowledge, disposition and operation' will propagate continuing overpopulation into various breakdowns of the resource/environment, economics and 'organized society' in general
-except insofar as related sciences intrude upon the constitution of government and its economic policies.]
8 - The intellectual and operational dispositions of humans today are such -and institutionalized as such (above), that except for offsetting influence upon goverment by related science, there appears to be no way to prevent 'hitting the
wall of carrying capacity' in classical evolutionary processs of life-forms 'primitive man and earlier'.
(*h) -Thus we know that -State of the Planet et cetera-
a - The longer any 'unscientifically contained' degradation of the resource/environment, the greater the complexity of any ecological collapse attaching it -and more difficult it's understanding and 'poorer the accommodation to
it'.
b - Current population growth and 'pecking-order-based' lifestyle-and-quality(*q) are unsustainable and are corrupting ecological and resource/environment dynamics faster than
scientists (2003) are able to analyze, model and project them.
c - An attrition of some kind is inevitable(*o), and autonomous peoples and nations do have, each, 'an integrity of government its own' thru which each might develop 'some
local such attrition its own'.
d - 'Man' today is neither intellectually nor operationally disposed (momentum) to 'attrition' the fundamentally value-based government/economy with which he has evolved to any compromise of his 'right
(pecking-order-based) to best well-being and quality of life' or strive for that, except 'from lessers beneath him' (the scientist included -example).
e - Autonomous peoples and nations will continue to overpopulate and their resource/environments will continue to degrade (example) -except as limited by carrying
capacity or driven by off-setting education or outside influence.
f - 'Well-being and the quality of life' 40 to 50 years from now will be determined, successively, by what knowledge and operational dispositions are imparted children grown into the
determination of government/economy of that time.
h - There is NO world government-whole thru which to develop an integral attrition out of the widely-varying, dispositions, capabilities, resource/environments and 'qualities of life' (scroll -*q) in 'a world democracy autonomous peoples and nations'.
(*g)
g - We are subspeciated by facts of rate-limitation(*z) and relational depth of 'knowledge', culture, belonging, government, economy, 'quality of life'(*p) and both ownership and
being owned -'faculties' (genetics -example), habits, physical limitations, intelligence, 'preferences' and stoop-labor and 'Botox' too. The deeper and/or more constraining one's 'subspeciation', consequently
(profession/artisanship or 'stoop-labor' for example), the greater may be his inability and/or ineptitude at cooperation -except as otherwise manipulated (education et cetera) -especially with the system under attrition. -Because
rate-limitation constrains operational capability under deliberative, furthermore, subspeciation is both inevitable and successive.
[The 'intellectual productivity' of deliberative capability easily outdistances physical capability of 'keeping up with it' -the continuing growth of 'lessers to do the work', a measure of this. Robotics, consequently, clearly has a role in this, but it
may be the genetic modification of humans does too.]
i - The longer the resource/environment degrades -thus-far consumerism(*q), the greater the 'ringing into dynamic stability' -and greater the probability of operational breakdowns (futurology) within and between principal peoples and nations 'accommodating' to it.
j - All 'proactive resurrection' of degraded resource/environment requires the use, one way or another. of thus-far 'naturally' depleting fossil fuels and potable waters; the greater that depletion therefore, the more likely the
abandonment of such 'resurrection'.
Probabilities
a - What is the probability that the average, 'variously subspeciated' individual will be able to support or somehow maintain his 'well-being and quality of life' as employability diminishes with natural resources?
b - What is the probability that an eventually unsupportable and declining overpopulation will be intellectually disposed or even operationally able to 'meliorate the well-being and quality of life' of an aging
overpopulation?
c - What is the probability that 'the pejorative effects of attrition on lifestyle and quality of life' (above) will NOT be 'made manifest on overpopulation from the economic bottom up'? -or the aged back? -that today's 'lessers' and
'wannabe's will understand (and accept?) their 'demise under attrition'?
d - What is the probability that (a) 'a diasporatively spoiled population of pecking-order- and value-based activities, roles and goals' will optimize its evolution out of the existence of (b) 'an old-age-inept population it
marginalizes by dependence upon population and economic growth for well-being and quality of life'? -population it is, in fact, becoming anyhow?
e - What the probability that 'democratic government of modest education' (aristocracy) will undertake 'the economic and related policies necessary (science) to meliorate pejorative consequences of overpopulation and
unemployability'?
f - What is the probability that anyone running for government office on a platform of attrition will be voted into office? -the probability that anyone in office will change from the politics that got him there to those of attrition?
g - What is the probability that scientists will collaborate enough intellectually and operationally to influence government (aristocracy) into a reconstitution for the dirigiste heuristics inherent of
'attrition into sustainable resource use'?
h - What is the probability that science will so pervade 'a world democracy of ignorantly autonomous peoples and nations' as to proactively manipulate the resolution of problems out of classically aristocratic economics' -even by intervention,
suppression or 'small war', for example?
a - 'The aristocracies of the world' are all now 'homogenized' of ethnicity and religion, and homogenized also ('philosophically') by 'generally capitalist, free-enterprise government/economics'.
b - World governments in general have not evolved enough intellectually so as to have been constitutionally able to prevent population growth (momentum) from overrunning capability of the resource/environment to support it.
c - Some federation has taken place among nations (Europe), but 'pecking-order-based autonomy and national wealth has only continued to widen the range of lifestyle and the quality of life thruout the whole as (below) it worsens out the
bottom'.
d - Nuclear energy has widely supplanted a diminished availability of non-nuclear energy -but that growth too has stopped on grounds of 'incontrovertibly protracting pejorative consequences of overpopulation and economic growth'.
e - The availability of potable water has so diminished -even as widely augmented by energy-consuming technology (above), that 'second- and third-rate water' is in common use thruout the world.
f - The combined availabilities of energy and potable water have so diminished that 'venture capital and free enterprise have (effectively -more below) no place to go for economic growth'.
g - 'Autonomy of nations' has made it impossible to keep 'lesser' nations from trying for 'successful free-enterprise capitalism' -with the result that they have been more ecologically destructive than successful nations.
h - 'Economic growth' has effectively stopped thruout the world, and people as a whole are finding themselves (unemployment high) 'financially unable to maintain the material/substance(*q) of life under economic
growth'.
i - Employment has become so heavily sub-speciated under 'economic growth', furthermore, that people as a whole now are neither capable of maintaining that 'material/substance' nor practically disposed to learning 'how-to'.
j - 'Lifestyle and the quality of life' has likewise so sub-speciated that people as a whole are not 'knowledgeably disposed to meritably occupying the idle-mind time of now widespread
unemployability'.
k - Government revenues continue to diminish, and the institutional and physical integrity of society continues to break down from the bottom up under failure of government support -entitlements, health and such services, police, infrastructure et
cetera.
Following below is the 'the human phenomenon and things human' at 2040-50 developed as a progression of situations beginning with the one least changed by that time and terminating with targetted 'gross demographics' (of the title) at that time, thus
'the intellectual and operational nature of mankind' is not as likely to have evolved as much by that time (momentum) as the resource/environment is to have been degraded by that nature into that time -the 'the human phenomenon and things
human' following in accordance.
Regardless of ZPG in more civilized nations, momentum and once 'economic growth' have carried 'lesser' nation population growth beyond any possibility of aspired-to 'lifestyle-and-quality' under world-wide 'free-enterprise capitalism'; energy
availability is in short supply and strictly controlled -'fresh' water much the same; unemployment is widespread -incomes and revenues down and decreasing -barter and 'trading-down', everywhere a way of life. 'Upper civilization' continues to pull
government in about itself and 'leave lesser society, successively downward, to fend for itself' -anomie and warlordism at the bottom. The resource/environment has so degraded that there is little in the way of industry-level production -food in
particular, that is not strictly controlled and guarded from above. People continue to leave for simpler, isolationist ways of life -absent the trappings of civilization.
1 - Intellectual and Operational 'Texture' of People and Society at Large
Diasporation, science and technology, economic growth and globalization have combined to homogenize and secularize people thruout the world to overall common 'free-enterprise, capitalist democracy' and relative freedom from either religious or
ethnic disposition (more below). The resource/environment has so degraded in that 'success' however (below), that 'economic growth' is now de_facto under attrition -unemployment both widespread and endemic, with the result
that the material substance of that growth -of 'lifestyle and quality of life', is now shrinking under 'a scientific and technological imperative to sustainable resource use' growing into government. The overall, major problem is that world
population has so grown and 'subspeciated under that success' -intellectually and operationally, that people in general are completely unprepared for 'life as we knew it not continuing' and for 'not knowing what to do about it':
'How do I hang on to what I have?' as its maintainability skews downward thruout the world; worse still, 'overpopulation and idle-mind time have now, ineptly, no place to go'(more below).
2 - The Availability of Energy
The general situation regarding 'diminishing energy availability' -and related pollution, is that 'the higher a nation is in the world democracy of autonomous peoples and nations' (energy-based aristocracy), the more likely it is to
'optimize' dependence upon diminishing energy resources and minimize pollution related to its own 'well-being and viability' -and the more likely it is also to 'operate to that exaction hierarchically downward' (below) -and correspondingly,
the 'lower' the people of a nation (and nation therein), the more likely they are to try to avail themselves of energy as necessary (and 'pollute') regardless of source or consequence out of simple ignorance and disconcern.
More in particular then:
a - Oil and gas have been so depleted that coal is now the default source of energy for peoples and nations that either have such source or are economically able to 'arrange' for that energy in some way (more below).
b - Other sources have been developed insofar as possible -hydroelectric, wind-farm, biomass and methyl hydrate(*r), but because of limitations unique to each of them, even the combination of these these
sources fails to meet requirements of now overpopulation and remnant 'lifestyle-and-quality' consequences of former 'economic growth'.
[The use of nuclear energy grew appreciably since 2005 ('higher' nations primarily), but it leveled off as scientists and economists eventually succeeded in convincing government against further development on the grounds that 'continued economic growth
supported by such energy would only worsen still more the consequences of an ignorantly hopeful world overpopulation and its continuing degradation of the resource/environment'.]
Energy availability 'against the wall', in effect, the 'routine(*v) of economic growth' that was the core of employed, integrally operating, civilized society and the support (government and taxes) of its institutions, has now
given way (respectively) to 'idle-mind time and occupation' and attrition of those institutions -health, education, welfare, infrastructure et cetera.
3 - Potable Waters
'Potable water' is any 'fresh' water that an organism needs and has access to for 'intrinsic life-form consumption'. Water, in this respect, is not only the water that humans need for drinking and cooking, but the water they need for (i) what they raise
to eat (fresh-water food-chains-whole), and (ii) the various organisms they depend upon in addition to food -'the ship of the desert', pets, the 'pure' waters required for science and technology, and 'the flora and fauna of the environment for its
constitution -the atmosphere included.
The situation here (2040-50) is that population has so grown that availability from 'classical' rivers, lakes and aquifers has long since peaked; recycling and purification too, furthermore, are
also under attrition because of their dependence upon energy (above). What this means is that availability and quality of water varies greatly thruout the world depending (economics) upon 'what one brings to the table of capitalism and autonomous
collusion' -and within each 'aristocracy' as a consequence of that. The quality of water and the ownership of water, consequently, is, like energy/sources, a matter of crucial importance in world politics and the survival of peoples and
nations: gray-water is in common use, and waters with varying degrees of pollution or bad chemical quality (arsenic for example) are also in common use -a matter of 'how one fits into the government/economy-whole' (more below).
2 - 'Warm-blooded vertebrate' natural selection is determined in addition by cerebrative capability and its concomitant of pecking order -early man's 'best well-being' therein -'pecking-order-based expression'
eventually following further evolution (-see The System of Human Experience).
3 - 'New-organism-in-econiche evolution' is generally manifest in three inhabitational stages of population 'mass' affecting the resource/environment: 'invasive' diasporation, 'overshoot' saturation and 'envelope' dynamic
stabilization under 'econiche carrying-capacity' (-see The Unemployability Conjecture).
4 - There are (therefore) three domains of related human energy expenditure: (a) 'diasporatively cheap natural resources and labor', (b) 'saturatively depleting natural resources and unsupportable labor' (effective over-population)
and (c) 'sustainable resource use by a stable population'.
5 - There are (further) two domains of energy expenditure attaching one's 'expression of life-style-and-quality' (human well-being and 'survival of the fittest' therein): (a) the passive material/substance out of which expression is
optable ('registered experience' included therefore) and (b) the active expenditure ('work'/employment in general) thru which 'earning' is (intended) to 'assure' both (i) the physically-optable existence of passive material and (ii)
time to opt expression (-complete discussion in Energy and The Nature and Use of The Resource\Environment).
6 - 'As diasporative viability evolves towards stable' (then) -and depending upon how it approaches and 'dwells' in saturation, (a) 'active-expenditure buying power from earning diminishes with diminishing cheap natural resources and labor'
and (b -necessarily favoring viability) 'pecking-order-based life-style-and-quality' also diminishes (consequently) under diminishing 'pecking-order-based passive material maintainablilty and time for expression'.
7 - 'Genetic imperative' commits us (consequently) -'deliberation evolving', to deliberatively evolving a life-form viability of correspondingly reliable organism-fundamental requirements (1, above) -to, in other words,
deliberatively vestigializing pecking-order expression in favor of 'sustainable resource use for best continuing viability of organism life-form' -Dirigiste Heurism and The Base-Domain of
Human Requirements therein.
A common phrase, in this respect, is 'economic growth' -that, in particular, 'The economy has to grow'. This is important because the definition of the phrase -and its intellectual and institutionalized pursuit
in particular by once all first-world nations, has brought the world to what economic situations are described in the parent essay.
Following next are definitions of 'economic growth' and 'wealth' kernel to that; following that is a short commentary by an economics professor. Especially remarkable here -falling out the bottom, is that 'economic growth' measures itself with 'relative
disconsideration of pejorative affects upon the configuration space'; worse still then, it more or less casually or blindly includes in this sui generis 'good', the consequences of overpopulation. -Or to put it in an absolutely perverse way:
'Overpopulation may not be good for the resource/environment, but it makes for good economic growth'.
wealth n. 1. An abundance of valuable material possessions or resources; riches. 2. The state of being rich; affluence. 3. A profusion or abundance. 4. Econ. All goods and resources having economic value. [ME welthe < wele < OE wela.]
The American Heritage Dictionary; Copyright (c) 1986, 1987 ]
The typical definition of economic growth is rising GDP, and the typical definition of economic development is rising GDP per capita.
However, when asked, most economists admit that GDP is a terrible measure of an economy's production of economic goods and services, let alone wealth, because:
b) GDP fails to account for many services that contribute to economic well being, such as services performed in households.
Many efforts have been made to adjust the GDP to better measure economic output; probably the best is the GPI (Genuine Progress Indicator) that is put out by Redefining Progress, a San Francisco-based group
committed to debunking not just GDP, but any "icon" that serves as a general proxy for progress.
When pressed, most economists admit that GDP tells us very little about how well off people are. However, most economists, relying on ceteris paribus and the old reliable assumption "More Is Better", nevertheless argue that a rising GDP indicates
improvement in the economy and improvement in peoples' well being. This, of course, is nonsense. Even aside from environmental degradation, there is ample research suggesting that, beyond a very modest income, happiness and satisfaction depend far more
on relative income and other factors than on GDP. For example, while average U.S. real income has more than tripled in the past 50 years, average "life satisfaction" is unchanged.
[An aside: IMO, the ability of the Bush 43 Administration to scare the hell out of people over not just terrorism, but even over health care ("Kerry's plan is a government takeover of health care.") suggests that one of the costs of our rising GDP
has been a rise in paranoia. I think part of it is the result of globalization and peoples' fear of employment insecurity, but I think it is also related to the decline in community and extended family that have accompanied the maturation of our consumer
culture. Juliet Schor and Robert Frank are economists who have done some good work in this area.]
Ecological economists led by Herman Daly are highly critical of the mainstream "neoclassical" claim that higher GDP generally indicates higher economic wealth. Daly, following Kenneth Boulding, argues that a rising GDP as we measure it in the U.S.
indicates a rise in "throughput"; that is, an increase in the volume of materials and energy extracted from the earth. It doesn't take a Ph.D. in physics or ecology to realize that these additional materials must eventually return to earth as residuals
from the economy. Viewed in this light, a rising GDP probably measures reductions in future economic wealth as well or better than it measures increases in current economic wealth.
In short, the encyclopedia is simply wrong. The standard definition of economic growth, a rising GDP, fails even to indicate greater production of material goods, let alone a greater level of economic wealth. All it indicates is that the stuff that it
measures is going up. It does not accurately measure increases in economic output; it does not account for ecosystem degradation, and it certainly does not indicate an increase in economic wealth.
Classical evolutionary process is fundamentally mechanistic -the introduction and evolution of organisms in an econiche identifiable and defined by (evolving) natural selection uninfluenced by deliberative capability. Because
organisms of such an econiche are unable to influence that process in anything of a 'deliberative' way, it is 'an econiche of ignorantly autonomous peoples and nations' even to the inclusion of 'merely cerebrating organisms as happen to be
influencing and influenced' by pecking order. The definition remains, in other words, as long as some organism -'deliberating mankind', for example, does not somehow offset or preempt the mechanistic pecking order enclaused the
definition.
'The evolution and progression of mankind' however, because it is that of 'an organism of eventually/now deliberative capability', has also so far been 'the evolution and progression of ignorantly autonomous peoples and nations' -each, 'an
evolving organism of discrete cultural genome under econiche/democracy natural selection'. Given the nature of such 'natural selection under pecking order' then, the role of each of the 'autonomous peoples and nations' in its, whole-
earth/econiche dynamics depends upon the evolution of 'a new kind of natural selection', one that depends almost entirely upon (a) the sophistication of a people or nation -purely intellectual, therefore purely scientific, and (b) the
nature of its sub-econiche 'sphere of influence' for how that sophistication -or poverty of it, and the 'substance' of that sub-econiche/ operate within the whole.
The implications are clear and unambiguous:
'Deliberative capability' being what it is, overall mankind is ineluctably drawn towards life (operational structure) under a single-organism-whole Dirigiste Heurism, be that called 'government', 'economy', whatever.
The economic, political and other pecking orders of 'people and nation organisms', therefore, will 'ineluctably undergo natural selection and evolution towards that dirigiste heurism'. More specifically then, 'best well-being and viability
of the organism-whole' will continue to be successively determined by whatever circumstances operate and/or are manipulated to operate to an understanding of this herein principle -the understanding that there are no axiomatics -ethnic, religious,
political or otherwise, other than underlie the simple physics underlying evolutionary process and the evolution of deliberative capability and its inevitable 'dirigiste heurism'.
We are rate-limited organisms in a rate-Iimited universe. The momentum inherent 'the human phenomenon and things human' then, is, more properly, one of complexing subroutines and submoments -and 'sustainable resource use' then, depends upon
knowing what the dynamics of the system-whole are as a function of time and 'manipulating' them accordingly -heuristic process thruout, thus the deeper the complexity of that phenomenon and things, the greater in time the 'black box distance' between (a) 'knowledge of best direction heuristically evolving at the top' and (b) its 'heuristic evaluation of consequences developing out of the bottom' -'a world democracy of ignorantly autonomous peoples and
nations being manipulated or driven to unlearn bad habits and dispositions to what good ones under what authority by whom'.
There are two arenas of consideration regarding 'the human organism in its and the earth's co-evolution':
Classical, 'lower organism' view: the evolving 'mankind animal' invades its earth/econiche and -as long as the solar system supports it, various life-forms evolve and die-off, and various sub-ecologies change accordingly -mankind more or less
existentially (below) settling into whatever ecological and other dynamics developing as they may -thus-far mankind, in other words,
as opposed to-
H cogitans -the 'classical' above, but under the successively evolving existence as 'an organism genetic-imperative-driven to optimize its viability as it discovers (deliberative capability) the nature of itself in that fixed
configuration space of dynamic ecologies'.
A conceipt then, H cogitans distinguishes 'continuously thinking and learning man' from H sapiens, 'arrogantly knowing man'.
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*p - re: "peoples and nations effectively subspeciated by 'knowledge', culture, government, economy and 'quality of life'": (also SCROLL DOWN)
March 2, 2001 Science Magazine, Vol 291, Issue 5509, 1722-1725 |
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June 9, 2004 National Geographic Magazine
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Science Magazine VOL 304 25 JUNE 2004 Documenting the Bushmeat Trade's Toll Many conservationists consider rampant commercial hunting for bushmeat one of the biggest threats to Africa's apes, forest antelope, and other species (Science, 11 Apri12003, p. 232). This site from the Bushmeat Crisis Task Force pushes an agenda, but it also offers abundant background information for researchers interested in the problem. Bibliographies list more than 300 technical books and papers, nearly 150 reports, and 800-plus news articles, many ", available online. For example, you can read a recent report on measures some logging and mining companies have taken to reduce bush meat trade on their land. You'll also find synopses of bush meat research projects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. |
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August 7, 2004 The Economist Magazine South Asia's floods In all the wrong places DELHI AND DHAKA Human intervention could do much to mitigate the monsoon's annual tyranny
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