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# 2021-11-11 - Ecological Grounding by William Rees | |
Excerpts from William Rees [1] interview hosted by Michael and | |
Connie Barlow | |
[Regarding deep connection to the Earth.] It's an experience that | |
urban people today cannot have. The whole process of urbanization | |
tends to disconnect people both spatially and psychologically, from | |
the natural system of which we are a part, which supports us. | |
Everything that goes through the economy, the whole food web as we | |
now call it, has a connection to the environment. I don't like the | |
word environment because it already separates us from everything | |
else. But it does connect us to nature. | |
I wanted to work on the human dimension of this problem... It was | |
the idea that if we could pull together all of the land needed to | |
support not only our body but the infrastructure, technologies, and | |
so forth, we would have a fairly good idea of the size of the | |
microplanet that would be necessary to support this city, or this | |
region, or this country, and then clearly the whole of the Earth. | |
Rachel Carson's The Silent Spring dramatically, because I happened to | |
study bird populations for my doctoral [about DDT?] understanding the | |
dynamics of their reproduction and how the DDT [affects it?], which | |
by the way was unknown to science until we had to find it by | |
hindsight. This is so common in our ecological complexity. The | |
phenomena that are emergent: I am referring here to the thin shell | |
syndrome, that the byproducts of DDT produced, by acting as a hormone | |
unit in birds, so that they were perfectly fertile, normal mating | |
behavior took place, but they would lay eggs that had such thin | |
shells that when their parents rolled them over to maintain the | |
oxygen, the shells would break and the eggs would never hatch. And | |
that thin shell syndrome was affected by a hormone replacement | |
affecting the laying down apparently of calcium carbonate in the egg | |
shell, and hence Bingo! To find that we had to work backwards. It | |
was an unknown physiological mechanism until it was interfered with | |
by these breakdown products... I thought that was brilliant both as | |
an illustration of the complexity of this and why we are going to be | |
hit repeatedly by phenomena about which we have no understanding | |
until we discover them by hindsight. The fact that she had warned us | |
of the likelihood of these kinds of phenomenon just was sheer [?]. | |
I had a very naive understanding of political dynamics. But clearly | |
now what [science community harassment] Rachel Carson went through | |
has been experienced by many innovators since. Anyone who challenges | |
the mainstream is going to be in deep trouble. One of the great | |
readings that I think everyone should take a peek at is The Crowd: A | |
Study of the Popular Mind by Gustav Le Bon [3]. He was the first of | |
a long line of cognitive psychologists who studied the human mind | |
particularly of how people behave en masse. Here is a wonder quote | |
from it. | |
"The masses have never sought after truth. They prefer error, for | |
error seduces them. Whoever supplies them with error will be their | |
champion. Those who deny their error will be despised." | |
Something like that. His point was that once we have adopted a | |
particular worldview way of seeing, anyone who challenges this view | |
is going to be rejected. So Rachel Carson along with many others | |
have been rejected, denied, kicked out, because their views simply | |
went against the grain. They challenged what was already beginning | |
to emerge as the growth dynamic. We're stuck in this era of | |
assumption of unlimited economic growth propelled by continuous | |
technological progress. That idea only goes back to the 1950's. | |
So Rachel Carson's book emerged within a decade of the emergence of | |
this new idea that we could solve all of our problems through growth | |
of the economy. So to have someone who was a reasonably prominent | |
scientist stick her neck out and argue against the perceived wisdom | |
in that domain: pesticides are good, they are going to stimulate | |
agricultural production, and so forth, it takes one little bit of her | |
work, it was simply anathema to what was going on. | |
By 1972 I was already teaching in the school of community and | |
regional planning at the University of British Columbia. I was | |
charged there with developing the first ever courses on human | |
ecological planning in any university in North America. So limits to | |
growth came out as an absolute gift to just about everything that I | |
was trying to teach in that particular course. The degree to which it | |
was received with utter rejection and disbelief by my colleagues in | |
the months for up to a year or two following the publication of | |
Limits To Growth, it was sunk by as an effective idea by mostly | |
economists who had completely adopted the growth ethic. The primary | |
objection was that the model was A) primitive and B) didn't take into | |
account human ingenuity. At the time human ingenuity was regarded as | |
the greatest of resources, so with the advance of technology we could | |
overcome any resistance to the growth of the human enterprise, | |
population, or the scale of economic activity. This was the kind of | |
idea that people wanted to believe. It reinforced this confidence in | |
our technological capacity to move forward. Here again, like Rachel | |
Carson, here's a book that said: | |
"Wait minute, if we continue down this trail, sometime in the 21st | |
century population will peak out, production will peak out, pollution | |
will peak out, and the whole thing is going to come tumbling down." | |
Well, nobody wants to hear that. So just as Gustav Le Bon said, we | |
will reject, deny, forget any contrary positions to those that we | |
hold dear and receive with open arms those views and people who | |
support that which we already believe. The point is, Limits To | |
Growth was sunk from day one largely by the economics profession who | |
simply disregarded it as irrelevant, a sidebar, even dangerous | |
because it intended to halt the progress of the human enterprise. | |
I had always wanted to study something called human ecology. I | |
couldn't do it. I could not find a university in North America that | |
would teach human ecology as from a biological point of view. There | |
were departments of human ecology in say geography departments, but | |
it was all about human use of resources. The sociologists had a | |
little sub-branch of human ecology but it was based on allegories and | |
so on, borrowings of European plant physiology and ecology, but just | |
transposed to the human system. So they considered the succession of | |
vegetation in the field for example, to be comparable to the | |
succession of land usage as a city expands over the landscape. It | |
was a very limited perspective of ecology. Nobody studied human | |
beings as organisms, as components of, as essential parts of nature. | |
It simply wasn't done. The point of the matter is, to this day most | |
ecologists study non-human beings and if we're going to look at urban | |
ecology, it's "How does the city come up with a proper habitat for | |
bird species, or ants, or caterpillars, or the distribution of | |
earthworms along a pollution gradient downwind from Chicago might be | |
a typical example of urban ecology. That's all very well, but it's | |
really the ecology of earthworms with respect to cities rather than | |
what I took to be urban ecology, which really ought to be all about | |
human beings. It's amazing to me that we couldn't see that people, | |
humans, Homo Sapiens are not only the creators of the human ecosystem | |
but its principle architects. | |
The ecological footprint concept is really a tool in ecological | |
economics. The main frame of economics driving the world today is | |
something called neoliberal economics, and it's basically that form | |
of economics which regards the perfect market as the ultimate arbiter | |
of all social values; there's no need for government considerations | |
of moral or ethical questions outside the market. Just let the | |
economy work and things will be OK. Its primary goal is, of course, | |
continued growth. It assumes that continuous technological | |
development is the tool by which we can achieve that. Now its | |
starting premise is that the economy and humankind are separate | |
systems. By the way, this is identical to the idea from ecologists | |
that humans are separate from the rest of the world. So both | |
disciplines, economics and ecology separate humans from everything | |
else. So the economists have the human system over here and the | |
ecosphere over there. There's almost no important connection between | |
the two. They do recognize that the economy draws on the ecosystem | |
for resources and dumps wastes back into it, but technology can cope | |
with both of those. So we assume with technological advances that | |
scarcity is constantly being pushed off. | |
Initially we could drill for oil by poking a finger in the ground and | |
it would gush out. But when those easy to exploit oil wells dried | |
up, we learned how to drill much deeper. Now we drill for oil | |
several kilometers below the bottom of the sea, and that may be | |
several kilometers below the surface of the ocean. So we just keep | |
keep developing technologies. Fracking was another one, to get new | |
oil, excess resources that we thought were impossible a few years ago. | |
Again, something like copper. We used to need several percent copper | |
for an ore to be valuable. We used to think of an ore that had a | |
trace of copper as utterly worthless. Well, today we can exploit | |
that because we have developed the technology to do so. | |
So the economist's vision has some support, these advances that keep | |
relieving us of scarcity, so that growth seems to carry on. But the | |
upshot of this is that the economy is envisioned as a circular flow | |
of money values with no important connectivity to nature. Understand | |
this. Once you believe that the economy is a self-generating, | |
circular flow of money values, and it has no important connection to | |
nature, you have an intellectual concept that enables perpetual | |
growth with no consequence whatsoever from the natural environment. | |
Now ecological economics starts from a different view. Instead of | |
seeing the two as separate, the economy over here and the ecosphere | |
over there, we regard human beings and their economies and social | |
systems as subsystems of the much larger whole. Not only that, they | |
are completely dependent subsystems on that larger whole. So any | |
increase in the flow of materials to and from the economy and nature | |
necessarily degrades the natural component. So in effect, the | |
ecological perspective in ecological economics sees the human system | |
as potentially parasitic on the ecosphere. | |
Now a parasite is any organism that gains its vitality at the expense | |
of the vitality of the host. Once you adopt the view that the human | |
subsystem is growing by extracting resources, and in fact what it | |
does is convert the ecosphere into human bodies and the artifacts of | |
culture. This is a system in which there is a clear potential for | |
parasitism, where the vitality of the host system is destroyed even | |
as the parasite grows and becomes more splendid in all of its | |
ramifications. I think that's exactly the situation we are in today. | |
The human enterprise continues to grow and expand. Once you | |
understand that it is a subsystem, the growth of the human enterprise | |
is necessarily at the expense of the rest of the system. | |
So today, if we look at mammals for example, and go back ten thousand | |
years, human beings were less than 1% of the mass of mammals on | |
planet Earth. Today humans are about 32% of the mammalian biomass. | |
The [total] biomass has actually increased because people have | |
increased the productivity of nature, but humans are 32% of that | |
biomass. Our domestic animals: sheep, cattle, pigs, horses, and so | |
on account for another 64%. So somewhere between 95% and 98.5% of | |
all mammalian biomass on Earth is human beings and their domestic | |
animals. So that wild nature has been reduced from over 99% of | |
mammalian biomass down to just about 1.5% to 4%. That's an | |
astonishing example of how the expansion of the human enterprise is | |
necessarily at the expense of the rest of nature. | |
When I go to political meetings and I see a politician stand up and | |
say "There's no contradiction between the growth of the economy and | |
the maintenance of the ecosphere," I am tempted to stand up and | |
scream "Bullshit!" | |
We have to understand that human beings don't act out of reality. | |
Human beings act out of social constructs. We socially construct the | |
realities from which we operate. The current social construct is | |
this one of unimpeded economic growth mediated through perpetually | |
increasing technological prowess. As long as we adhere to that, the | |
reality being human beings contained within nature, the reality is | |
then that we are consuming nature from the inside out. We are the | |
maggot in the planetary apple. | |
If you think of human beings as any other species, I think there are | |
three qualities that we really have to keep in mind. The first is | |
that we have exactly the same potential for exponential growth as any | |
other species. Exponential growth is simply a growth process where | |
the doubling time is constant. If you think about a bacterium being | |
dropped on a petri dish of nutrient [broth?], one cell, bingo!, under | |
ideal conditions with perfect nutrients, temperature, and so on, can | |
be two cells within 20 minutes to half an hour, but a half an hour | |
later it's four, and then eight, and then sixteen, and thirty-two, so | |
the population is doubling in constant increments. As long as the | |
environment is capable of providing the nutrients and ideal | |
conditions for that growth. So that is simply exponential growth of | |
the population. Human beings are capable, as all species are, of | |
exponential growth. Normally, however, in nature, populations are | |
held in check in their local environments by negative feedback. If a | |
population inches up toward the carrying capacity of the environment, | |
it gets slammed back by the spread of disease because of higher | |
density, or because of a shortage of food, or because the increase in | |
species of that population has resulted in an increased predator | |
population so they slam it back. So normally, populations tend to | |
fluctuate in nature in the vicinity of their carrying capacity. The | |
point is, humans then, normally have been kept in check. | |
The only real, substantial growth in human populations in the last | |
fifty thousand years has been the expansion of people over the entire | |
surface of the Earth. In any particular place we fluctuated over | |
time. What happened about two hundred years ago is an extremely | |
important event in our history. It ties with two other aspects that | |
humans share with other species. | |
The first I have already alluded to, and that is that all species | |
will tend, this is a biological predisposition or compulsion as it | |
were, will expand to fill all the available habitat. All the | |
accessible habitat. | |
Again, people go "not necessarily." I simply said "Suppose we | |
discovered a new island the size of Australia that was pristine in | |
all ways." Do you think governments will get together and say "Well, | |
you know, we've screwed up everywhere else. Let's just leave this | |
one alone?" Not a chance! We'd be in there with national flags on | |
every peak and so on as the area is cut up and carved up and | |
basically colonized by the human parasite. So we have the same | |
predisposition to expand and fill all available habitat. | |
But the other thing we have is the predisposition to consume all | |
available resources. Every species does this. There is no | |
difference between humans and other species. We know of cases where, | |
for example, there are monkeys who feed on clams oddly enough, and | |
who discovered they could crack these clams with rocks, quickly wipe | |
out the entire clam population locally because they have learned to | |
use tools. Well people learn to use tools. Our technology is just a | |
word for a collection of tools. It has enabled us to expand, expand, | |
and expand where others could not go, so to speak, because they do | |
not have our technological prowess. So look at now what we have | |
done. We have a finite planet inhabited by a very clever species | |
called Homo Sapiens, with a predisposition to expand indefinitely, it | |
has a population predisposition to do so exponentially, and the | |
technological capacity to continue to provide the resources to | |
produce that expansion AND to defeat the negative feedback that would | |
have otherwise held us in check. | |
So about two hundred years ago as modern medicine got a better grip | |
on technology and so on, we discovered germ theory, and could | |
suppress disease, and modern medicine helped us increase our survival | |
rate without much affecting the birth rate. In fact, the use of | |
fossil fuel, we're going to get into more depth on the extent to | |
which our civilization is a product of fossil fuel. Fossil fuel is | |
the means by which we have acquired all the other resources necessary | |
to build the human enterprise. So look, here's the species with the | |
potential for exponential growth, with the capacity to modify the | |
environment so that it ensures a constant flow of resources, and the | |
ability to suppress any negative resistance with that disease, | |
scarcity, and so on. So just two hundred years ago, for the first | |
time in the history of our species, we began a truly exponential | |
explosion, realizing our full biological potential. Just two hundred | |
years ago. | |
So put this in context. If you think of anatomically modern humans | |
going back at least two hundred thousand years. It took two hundred | |
thousand years to reach one billion people. Then [it took] two | |
hundred years, just 1/1000th of that time to blow up to almost eight | |
billion people today. That's an astonishing event in history. Not | |
only that, it's completely anomalous. Yet we take growth to be the | |
norm. Maybe ten generations of people at most have experienced the | |
growth of technological change in their lifetime even to notice it. | |
This is profoundly important to get a grip on our current situation. | |
So this period, this last two hundred years that we take to be The | |
Norm, and which defines how we define ourselves, is really the single | |
most anomalous period in the history of our species. | |
So it would be an absolute error to suggest that we can go back to | |
the norm after, for example, the COVID virus pandemic has resolved. | |
All people can think about is "How soon can we get back to normal?" | |
And what I'm arguing is that "Normal" generated the problem in the | |
first place. Normalcy being humans packed together in cities where | |
disease can be rampant and we've freed ourselves of the conditions | |
for the negative feedback to start coming on full time. So, climate | |
change, biodiversity laws, land degradation, soil degradation, the | |
breakdown in ocean chemistry, COVID-19, all of these are examples of | |
incipient negative feedback ready to come in and correct this anomaly | |
that has occurred in the last two hundred years. | |
Now in theory, we have the intelligence to recognize that this is | |
what's going on. In theory we could bring it under control. But so | |
far there is very little evidence that we've realized that at the | |
level that counts. You may understand it. I may understand it. | |
Every morning we're being treated in Canada now to an hour long | |
lecture by the Prime Minister on how we're doing everything possible | |
to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and I think | |
that's a little bit short-sighted. | |
There's a wonderful little book by Bruce Wexler titled Brain and | |
Culture [4]. The bottom line is this, that in the course of the | |
development of the human brain, repeated experiences, repeated ideas, | |
the constant repetition of anything, forms synaptic circuits in the | |
brain, it shapes the development of our thought patterns. So that | |
over a period of time, one can acquire a set way of thinking, you can | |
call it an ideology, it could be a political ideology, it could be a | |
doctrine, it could be an academic paradigm, even a scientific theory, | |
it becomes imprinted in the brain in its own synaptic circuitry. So | |
once a concept associated with that whole idea comes up, the whole | |
circuit fires. So if I am a neoliberal economist with a profound | |
belief in globalization, as soon as I hear "trade theory" that whole | |
circuit begins to ignite and reinforce itself and so on. But once | |
we've acquired through this experience a particular way of thinking, | |
human beings tend to seek out other people who think the same way, | |
and to seek out experiences that reinforce our habitual way of | |
thinking. | |
So a particular ideological framing of events becomes embedded in the | |
brain. We tend to deny, reject, or forget any contrary information. | |
This is profoundly important in terms of trying to move beyond the | |
current situation. It requires an enormous shock to get people to | |
think outside the box. This is thinking outside the box quite | |
literally. The brain box, with its predesigned synaptic circuitry | |
has to be shattered before we can really latch on to the idea that | |
there's a different way of doing things. I think we're at one of | |
those critical points in our existence right now. So it is | |
conceivable, if there were sufficient shock to the global system, | |
that we could sit down and rethink how to restructure more in | |
conformance to the nature of reality than the current system has been | |
structured. | |
Again I have to emphasize that we socially construct our reality that | |
becomes embedded in synaptic circuitry in the brain. We then act out | |
of that synaptic circuitry far more than we do out of the reality. | |
If there's a mismatch between the way we think about things and the | |
way things really are, [then] we are headed for trouble. That's the | |
trouble we are in as a global civilization now. The economic | |
paradigms, the political paradigms from which we operate have no | |
useful information whatsoever about the nature of the biophysical | |
reality within which we are parasitically embedded. So as long as we | |
operate from that way of thinking, we have no choice [and] there are | |
no options available to us to change the nature of this destructive | |
relationship. So the first thing, and the reason I keep battering | |
away at this, is hoping we can create enough glimmers of light, | |
cracks in the system, that at some point it bursts open and people | |
get that A-Ha! moment where they realize [?] in some way that we can | |
do this differently. What if we developed an economy based on the | |
idea that we are utterly dependent on this other system that we are | |
currently draining. How could we devise a way of allocation and | |
distribution of the goods and services of nature so that a much | |
reduced population might live sustainably within the means of the | |
biosphere that supports it. All of this is possible. It's another | |
human construct. It would be a construct based on the nature of the | |
reality in which we find ourselves. | |
Again I emphasize, we are currently operating from an economic system | |
that has no form of internalization of the structural, the temporal, | |
or the physical properties of the ecosphere that the economy is | |
parasitizing. Hence, it cannot be anything but pathological. We | |
have to break from pathology or we go nowhere. All of my work has | |
been simply to understand, to open eyes to a different reality, or in | |
fact THE reality as I see it and enable us to crack open the current | |
system in ways that enable human beings to live more equitably within | |
the biophysical means of the ecosphere. That's the whole mission [?]. | |
Complexity is the biggest problem. Human brains evolved in small | |
group contexts. We are capable of coping reasonably well with a few | |
dozen other people at most in relatively confined habitats over which | |
we could do no significant damage, short term perhaps, as we rove | |
around over our home range, but the point of the matter is that human | |
beings evolved to cope within the lifetime of a person with an | |
unchanging environmental context dealing with relatively few other | |
people. Now in those circumstances it became adaptive, if in the | |
course of individual development one came to very quickly assume the | |
beliefs, values, and assumptions: the cultural norms of one's tribe, | |
because once one acquired that set of beliefs, values, and | |
assumptions; the mythology of the tribe, so to speak; it normally | |
added to tribal coherence, a sense of social coherence. But it gave | |
one a sense of personal identity because one could identify with that | |
group psychologically very healthy and [?]. It also, by the way, | |
created a barrier: the in-group, out-group concept. In human nature, | |
every culture that has been studied has some in-group, out-group | |
concept. We are over here, they are over there. Again, [this is] | |
highly adaptive ten thousand, fifty thousand, two hundred thousand | |
years ago. Thus the beginning of the problem that we are in here. | |
Another natural quality of humans is what economists call spatial, | |
social, and temporal discounting. People naturally tend to favor the | |
here and the now, close relatives and friends, and so on, over | |
distant places, future times, and people they don't know. That's the | |
in-group, out-group thing again. So it's perfectly natural to be | |
myopic. We are short-sighted by nature. Again, there is good reason | |
for doing so. If you don't have refrigeration, you had better eat | |
all that food right now because it will go bad and if you didn't get | |
it then somebody else would. It would be a typical way of reacting | |
to that circumstance ten thousand years ago. Today, of course, we | |
could in theory abandon that short-sighted way of looking at things, | |
but we don't because it's part of our nature to be social | |
discounters, temporal discounters, and spatial discounters. So | |
people naturally prefer the here, the now, close relatives over | |
someplace else, some distant future that may not effect them in any | |
case as people. So this tends to cause us to have a very limited | |
view and capacity for imagining the future. | |
But there's another thing that comes out of all of this, and that is | |
that we've come from a place of very simple systems that were at | |
least understandable if not controllable, to a place where we have | |
created a degree of complexity that is far beyond the capacity of any | |
human mind to wrap itself around. We look now on a world of | |
overlapping complex systems, not just the spatial systems, but the | |
Internet. Who REALLY understands how the Internet works? Nobody. | |
Who really understands money, let alone the entire economy? We've | |
got international mechanisms of global trade, massively complex | |
systems that nobody is capable of understanding in and of themselves | |
and yet they all integrate in some way that is beyond the capacity of | |
the human imagination. | |
So these systems all tend to evolve. What we have to get at here is | |
that we've now created a world that is vastly beyond our capacity | |
fully to understand. Systems seem to go through a cycle. They are | |
fairly simple to start with. They grow rapidly. They are easy to | |
understand. They reach a point of maturing. They become a little | |
less complex in the sense that they share redundant systems. They | |
become more and more brittle, but they get bigger and bigger. At the | |
same time, if we are talking about a human system, we see an increase | |
in corruption at the top, we see increase in income disparity, we see | |
increase in inability to look ahead, a greater tendency to protect | |
the way things are and so on. So eventually, the system... the human | |
system is a problem solving system. Its growth through this | |
trajectory is one that gets increasingly complex. Every time a | |
problem comes up, we solve it. So we get really efficient with our | |
new metal hunting and gathering gear, but we deplete our ecosystems, | |
so we have to invent agriculture, and that's wonderful, but then we | |
deplete the local soil, so we have to invent irrigation, and that's | |
wonderful, but then we have to expand, and now we have dams, oh by | |
the way with such a big land base we now have to get an army to | |
defend it against all these invading tribes. So the system gets | |
bigger and bigger and bigger and more expansive until some problem | |
comes along that we simply can't cope with. Because by this time | |
there's the division of labor, the priesthood, the governing class, | |
peasant classes, they become disenchanted because they're being | |
overtaxed by those who collect taxes at the top, and so on. Then a | |
big issue comes along and the whole thing can come tumbling down. It | |
might be climate change, it might be a bigger pandemic than this one, | |
it could be biodiversity loss, who knows? But that's the trajectory | |
that every civilization has ever followed. We seem to be on that | |
trajectory one more time. | |
There are some problems that may simply not be solvable. We've | |
created a system of such overwhelming complexity, there's no | |
precedent. Rome was complex. Mesopotamia was complex. Perhaps even | |
Easter Island civilization was complex. But they pale to | |
insignificance compared to the complexity of the global, integrated | |
systems that we have created. We not only created globally | |
integrated systems, but we have purposefully, because of the mental | |
models on which we operate, have simplified it by creating, for | |
example, just-in-time delivery. So if I manufacture medical | |
equipment here in Chicago, or Toronto, or wherever, but all the parts | |
are made in Japan and China, and they arrive exactly the day I need | |
to put them together, except when the pandemic shuts down the global | |
transportation system. So we've created this enormously complex | |
[and] at the same time simple system that is absolutely fragile. | |
There is one thing that is sometimes difficult for scientists to talk | |
about. That's the need for love and compassion. Human beings do | |
not, will not, protect that which they do not love. One of the great | |
regrets that I have, and I acquired this from years and years of | |
planning school, is the complete dissociation that most urban | |
planners have from the landscape, from the ecosystem. There's no | |
cognitive sense that we are literally a part of nature, that we are | |
made of star-stuff if you want to use that old [saying?]. So we have | |
no love for nature. When I say "we," I am talking about the majority | |
of society, the governing systems and all that. Some individuals do, | |
obviously, but for the most part we are an alien on our own planet | |
until and unless humans acquire some sense of compassion for other | |
species, some sense of compassion for other human beings in other | |
places. So please, let us have some compassion for other humans, for | |
the rest of nature, and for this planet upon which we live. | |
* * * | |
[Ben's notes follow] | |
Later i ran across information about Gregory Bateson's views [5] and | |
they reminded me of this interview. | |
> Gregory Bateson saw the world as a series of systems containing those | |
> of individuals, societies and ecosystems. Each of these systems has | |
> adaptive changes which depend upon feedback loops to control balance | |
> by changing multiple variables. He saw the natural ecological system | |
> as innately good as long as it was allowed to maintain homeostasis, | |
> and that the key unit of survival in evolution was an organism and | |
> its environment. | |
> | |
> Bateson, in this subject, presents western epistemology as a method | |
> of thinking that leads to a mindset in which man exerts an autocratic | |
> rule over all cybernetic systems and in doing so he unbalances the | |
> natural cybernetic system of controlled competition and mutual | |
> dependency. Bateson claims that humanity will never be able to | |
> control the whole system because it does not operate in a linear | |
> fashion, and if humanity creates his own rules for the system, he | |
> opens himself up to becoming a slave to the self-made system due to | |
> the non-linear nature of cybernetics. Lastly, man's technological | |
> prowess combined with his scientific hubris gives him the potential | |
> to irrevocably damage and destroy the "supreme cybernetic system" | |
> (i.e. the biosphere), instead of just disrupting the system | |
> temporally until the system can self-correct. ... In Earth system | |
> science. Geocybernetics aims to study and control the complex | |
> co-evolution of ecosphere and anthroposphere, | |
See also Planetary Boundaries [6] | |
* * * | |
[1] | |
Interview with William Rees | |
[3] | |
The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind by Gustav Le Bon | |
[4] | |
Brain and Culture by Bruce Wexler | |
[5] | |
Cybernetics in Philosophy | |
[6] | |
Planetary Boundaries | |
tags: collapse,notes,podcast | |
# Tags | |
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