Remembrance

My father Arthur “Art” Jarvis died of a heart attack 29 years ago in a world very different from the one we now live in. He was at work in a business that sprang from his lifelong love of learning and a desire to share that love and its many benefits with others. Among the benefits was the ability to make logical, informed decisions that might, on average, improve the lives of the people they affected, what he considered and hoped would be “common” sense. I was working with him at the time and shared a darker motivation for trying to develop and share a better way of learning than what was being taught in schools: avoiding life in a world where people could not distinguish fact from fiction, a society whose lifetime would consequently be brutal and short.

Now more than double my age at the time and just six years away from his age when he died, I have lived to see the world we feared begin to emerge. I continued the work in my own way after it became impossible to follow our common path, becoming aware in the process that we were taking for granted that people would choose to make good decisions if they had reliable information and could apply logic to determine their consequences. In short, the definitions of “good” and “bad” were not being explicitly considered. It was among the most consequential blind spots I have found in the search for blind spots that has been an integral part of my life. The most consequential and deeply personally blind spot was that moving to higher altitude would not adversely affect my father’s health, which it did and likely contributed to his death.

Environmental effects on health are now a major part of everyone’s lives, just as environmental concern has grown to be a test of values (“good” and “bad”) that are shared by - and therefore defining - groups in our diverse and increasingly fragile global society. Since the fates of everyone are tied to how we affect our common environment, with varying and considerable degrees of power bestowed by technology, the survival of our entire species and countless others that we share that environment with, depends on us having a core set of common values that is consistent with that survival. That is: we need “common sense” based on common values and a common understanding of reality.

One of my father’s insights, and the essence of his approach to learning, was that the process of discovery provides a common experience that can be a basis for effective communication and accelerated understanding through collaborative application of logic to the observations made in that discovery. Open-ended learning by small groups can scale to larger groups and their members (us) perceive and value the relationships between each other and between them and their environment. If knowledge and understanding are inherently valued, then the process and the growing membership of those who follow it, will be inherently valued. For my father, and for me, that was self-evident and enough. To reiterate what I learned later, what we value is arbitrary; and (in my view) to ensure that the process can continue or reach a mutually agreed end, we must include discovery of our values along with our discovery of the rest, beginning with the value that makes all values possible: our continued existence.

Beyond the Rabbit Hole

For weeks I have been fighting episodes of physical pain and depression triggered by what I've come to call "going down the Rabbit Hole." Direct experience or news leads to a cascade of thoughts about its meaning at all scales, accompanied by a mix of anger, helplessness, and despair that cannot be expressed productively to effectively delay, stop, or escape the destruction of many lives in the near future. Since I built my entire value system on the avoidance of extinction, its failure is my failure, and what feels like a profound depletion of the value of my own life – especially since I continue to contribute to the source of that failure in the way I live, a hypocrite to the last.

Seeing over a decade of predictions coming true provides no solace, and no useful guidance about what to do next. I had focused most of my energy trying to understand it and figure out how to stop it, while sharing the results of that search with as much passion and reason as I could muster. What was a tiny amount of remaining hope a year ago was dashed by the election of leaders whose words and actions strongly support just the opposite: growth at any cost, including the extermination of humanity – except for them and their families – as well as any other species that get in their way.

Attempts to focus onto doing and celebrating as much good as possible – like a dying patient working though his bucket list – have been overwhelmed by the torrent of news about far too many others doing just the opposite. I fall easily back into troubleshooting mode, and from there back into the Rabbit Hole.

As I write, there has just been another horrific mass shooting, beckoning for me to learn who and what was responsible. I am drawn to watch a crazy routine of identifying short-term answers that won't yield any lasting effects, because such acts are a symptom of something that resides in all of us, something we fear addressing more than the consequences of not doing so: the capacity to objectify other people to the point where their lives mean nothing relative to our own. Such reflection is just a taste of what it's like to go down the Rabbit Hole, which as part of a vast network of tunnel-like understanding connecting many experiences, is the same as the network itself.

Intellectually, I know that to get beyond the Rabbit Hole, to get beyond the pain it triggers and the death it represents, a new set of experiences must be discovered, described, and felt at a deep, visceral level – made as real as what they will ultimately replace. To draw on another metaphor, we must think and live "outside the box." In whatever time I have left, I'll try doing so, because the pain is becoming too much to bear.

Terms of Derision

Planet-killing psychopaths. Ruinators trying to turn the U.S. into RuiNation. Promoters of money over lives. Stupid, evil, or both. On social media I have been saying these things about the people with political and economic power whose actions I perceive to be reducing the chances of living in a world that conforms to my values. The terms were consciously crafted to highlight my judgment of right and wrong based on those values, while conveying characteristics that appear responsible for their actions. Because I value honesty, I've used them in venues where it should be clear that I was stating opinion, and tried to add context by providing explanatory references to sources of those opinions.

For example, "planet-killing psychopaths" (formerly "planet-killing sociopaths") refers to people and organizations whose actions excessively increase the extinction risk for both humans and other species, while apparently demonstrating no remorse for that impact – if they even have an interest in it. I use the term derisively because in my value system the continued existence of life is paramount, especially human life and the species whose existence supports it.

Objectively, I understand that such behavior may be built into some people's nature, or it may have been shaped by personal experience that made it a way of coping with their own lives. For all I know, it may even be a sort of safety valve on the growth of our species, ensuring that we humans are stopped from totally destroying the global ecosystem by destroying ourselves first, with the others that support us as necessary collateral loss. Whatever the reason, the result is bad in my view; and if the result is bad, then to be true to my values I must discourage or work to disable what causes it.

Similar logic applies to the other terms. "RuiNation" is one I made up to describe a "ruined nation" that has had its basic social and physical infrastructure damaged to the point that the majority of its citizens are suffering on a regular basis along with a diminishing life expectancy. "Ruinators" are those who facilitate the existence of such a country. RuiNation introduces quality of life to quantity of life as a value. Because I like to measure things, I include life expectancy, which has a clear correlation to both values. Any action or combined actions that increase the chances of making it so are to be discouraged, as a minimum. Clearly such actions may include reducing such things as: the quality and quantity of health care; the quality of air, water, and food; and access all of these.

My research has shown that money is an abstraction that serves the main purpose of coordinating acquisition, distribution, and use of resources to provide people's needs and wants (collectively, "happiness"). To the extent that it provides needs, it supports life; but when some people use it to meet their wants with resources others require to meet their needs, then it reduces life. This latter case is referred to in shorthand with the term "money means more than lives," applied to those who apparently value their own happiness (specifically, their wants) more than the survival of other people. It is used with derision because of my overarching valuing of life over the material environments that money and its accompanying physical resources can provide, environments that also use resources needed by other species who enable all people to live on this planet.

In some cases, it is unclear whether an action is intentional or the consequence of ignorance. We all have lack of knowledge and understanding, blind spots that lead us to cause bad things to happen (however one defines "bad") without being aware of it; I use the term "stupid" as shorthand for a person with this condition, particularly if it appears to be chronic. If actions are taken with knowledge of their negative consequences, then I ascribe the term "evil" to the person, even though on a more objective basis I consider evil to be a characteristic of actions rather than people. Sometimes (and perhaps more often than not), a mix of intentionality and ignorance contributes to such actions: trying to do one bad thing and causing another. If someone is in a position to know the consequences of their actions but appears to not know them, such as a politician with significant power, then I may ask which explanation holds (either or both) without excusing them for the consequences because they should know what they're doing more than most of the rest of us.

As I understand it, the most successfully long-lived societies survived and thrived in large part due to social feedback that promoted healthy behaviors and discouraged unhealthy ones. Valuing the characteristics of longevity and health has led me to fully embrace providing such feedback as a duty, which I have chosen to exercise through writing perhaps because I am an extreme introvert. I have also become more and more stressed as evidence continues to mount that we all live in a very short-lived society, motivating me to increasingly cry out in pain and judgment against the forces I perceive are causing that. This has caused some people to brand me a scaremonger and an extreme partisan. It's not scaremongering if the threat is real – which it is – and the appearance of partisanship is a consequence of the reality that there is a strong correlation between political affiliation and contribution to whether we will live or die, which is the ultimate value.

Enabling Life

My latest book, Death Stoppers Anthology, takes its name from a poem I wrote a few years ago called Death Stoppers that is included in the book. After writing the poem, I wrote a blog post that delved into some of its meaning; and in the new book's memoir section, I concluded that it embodies perhaps the best strategy for dealing with the global threat of ecological catastrophe that years of research has forced me to accept. Perhaps even more important for me personally, and others who may also be drawn toward depression after coming to terms with our situation, it presents a vision of what success might look like – something that can motivate us and serve as a source of hope while we do the hard work ahead.

Yesterday I had some time to appreciate some of the natural beauty around me, which here on the Front Range of Colorado is as easy as focusing on the Rockies that frame half our view. After recent snowfall, the mountains are particularly stunning, a stark overlay of both the immediate past and the distant past that both relaxes and challenges the mind. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that I have spent an unhealthy fraction of my life obsessed with finding and characterizing problems, and not enough time finding and characterizing – and more importantly, experiencing – the good, in people as well as the rest of Nature. Preserving, enhancing, and proliferating that good, and providing opportunities for good that we have yet to know, is, when we value life above and beyond (while including) our own, what "death stopping" enables.

When we see ourselves as "life enablers," then both our guiding value, and what we must do to honor that value, are crystallized around a vision of the kind of world we want to be part of. Death Stoppers ends with my take on that vision:

Disaster was averted

Death slowed to a crawl

Love and health became the rule

The team became us all.

The "team," of course, is the group of people who facilitate the changes that make that vision a reality, and ultimately we all must maintain it.

The rest of the poem deals with how that can be achieved, beginning with shaming those people who "didn't share... Who raped the land for fun and gain... And cared not what was fair." Sadly such people exist; but in a social environment such as our present one, where the values that cast their behavior as bad are eroded or absent, and where, increasingly, the amoral, homicidal, and ultimately suicidal philosophy that "might makes right" dominates, resistance cannot be unified and have a decent chance of prevailing. In the poem, the team understands this, and chooses to set an example at great personal risk: "To stop the death that threatened all... Without a shred of fear." Shaming is one way to have a discussion about values, by introducing them explicitly as a reason for observable action (which is focused on stopping behavior), but such a discussion can also be facilitated by celebrating existing examples of how the alternative, preferred values translate into experience we might (and I believe most of us would) want more.

In my recent post "Evaluating Competition," I laid out a case for assessing the values that are embodied in a competition's goals, rules, and full set of consequences in order to decide whether the competition is worth our participation and our society's support. Death Stoppers displays an application of this, where the team rejects those aspects of economic competition that value the happiness of a minority over long-term fairness and survival for the majority. The team is initially assisted by many others because their individual happiness has suffered, and it must demonstrate healthy replacements for the needs that the current competition serves before its values can be fully accepted and incorporated into a longer-lasting way of living (the economic aspects of which were described in my post "Spaceship Finance").

I hold on to some hope that this process can be hastened by the shortcut of engaging people's imaginations and reasoning through words and images that simulate what living might be like in alternative futures that are based on the exercise of different values. Making them believable depends upon another major requirement for a healthy world, common (and accurate) understanding that enables both quality communication and credibility. Working on such a shortcut is one of my main motivations for pursuing a writing business, which along with my research has only now set the stage for it. Since I have limited personal resources, and because I'm frankly worn out by dwelling on the problem of apocalyptic futures, I intend to focus on describing the consequences of success in enabling life, as well as the good in the here-and-now that I was luckily reminded of yesterday.

Reconnection

This week marks 20 years since my father, Art Jarvis, died of a heart attack in the middle of a typical day trying to improve the education of kids as the last of many contributions to making the world a better place to live. For years, we spent a lot of our time together discussing issues over a wide spectrum, from the dynamics of our family to math, science, and the lessons he'd learned from a deep and broad background about how society works – and doesn't. Shortly before he died, he paid me the ultimate compliment: that we were alike in the way we thought, except for experience. I've noticed considerable differences since then, but still encounter situations where his wisdom comes to mind, typically in the form of sayings he either learned or created to summarize the core of an issue.

I've been sick at heart lately as my confidence in the salvageability of a livable future slips significantly almost every day. I miss my father more than ever in these challenging times, and wonder what he would say about what's happening and what to do about it. If you'll allow me, let me slip into my fiction writing mode, and channel the part of my father that lives inside me to imagine how a conversation might go between us.

***

BRAD: Hi, Dad. I can't tell you how much I've missed you.

ART: Me too, buddy.

BRAD: A lot's happened since you left.

ART: I'm sure it has.

BRAD: The family's a lot different. For one thing, I got married, if you can believe that.

ART: I figured you might, eventually.

BRAD: I also became an atheist.

ART: Really. How did that happen?

BRAD: After you died, I followed your example. Did a lot of studying, a lot of thinking, and was even fairly active in a couple of churches. Finally I realized that although many of their values made sense, they were man-made: taught by myths but not dependent on them. I dropped the myths, kept the values. Even refined them a little.

ART: What did you come up with?

BRAD: Maximizing life and happiness, first with people, then with other species, with the recognition that we're all interdependent and important.

ART: That's a good summary. It pretty much covers them all.

BRAD: Exactly. It's changed a lot about how I think about things.

ART: I'm sure it has. How's the business going?

BRAD: I had to walk away from it. We tried, we really tried, but it was too much for just the two of us, and then Eleanor had to leave. I had to survive, so I decided to try other things.

ART: What? What are you doing now?

BRAD: Believe it or not, I'm back doing test engineering, and my own writing on the side along with some music. I was also a technical writer for a few years.

ART: Technical writing? We used to do our own...

BRAD: I know, I know. You remember how you used to bitch about how bad help files were for software? I tried doing it better. Can't say I always succeeded, but it beat finding everyone's mistakes for a living, where I got a little too cynical for my own good.

ART: Is it working better for you now?

BRAD: It's complicated. That's what I hoped to talk with you about.

ART: Okay, let's have it.

BRAD: Remember how much fun we had asking questions no one else would ask because they thought the answers were too obvious?

ART: And we found other answers. I was proud of that.

BRAD: I never stopped. I think it's part of my DNA. After you died, I started questioning all of the basic assumptions in my life. The religion thing was a big part of that. I also got a job testing telecom equipment, and found a lot of bugs thanks to what I call my "special skill." I started to find problems outside of work too, especially when I started applying my new value system. Because life is paramount, I got interested in the possibility of Earth being hit by asteroids and comets, and realized that we're all pretty vulnerable to extinction by something too few people are taking seriously. The life test also pointed to the need to settle other planets, to avoid extinction from a warming Sun. I got into promoting Mars exploration as the first step toward dealing with that threat. Then I learned about another threat, far more insidious but just as deadly.

ART: What's that?

BRAD: Humanity is responsible for a mass extinction event, potentially as large as any caused by an asteroid collision. It turns out that other species do a lot to keep the planet habitable, and we're killing them off by stealing or destroying their habitats; polluting the air, water, and soil; and hunting them to extinction. Part of the pollution comes from burning fossil fuels like coal and oil, which is causing heat to be trapped by the atmosphere; that leads to extreme weather such as droughts and mega-storms, melting of glaciers and the polar caps, and release of even more potent methane from permafrost which could amplify the effect by orders of magnitude. The carbon pollution is also acidifying the oceans, threatening the base of the food chain. By the end of this century, we could be all but extinct.

ART: A lot of other people must have figured all that out.

BRAD: The scientific community has done a great job nailing it down. Many have abandoned their normal reticence and are sounding the alarm big time. Unfortunately, the fossil fuel industry and others who depend on them have a stranglehold on the media and several governments, including ours, which is making it all but impossible to do anything meaningful about it before it's too late. I did my own research over the past few years, and it shows what looks like a clear correlation between humanity's impact on ecosystems, the populations of ours and other species, and people's happiness. I'm projecting a peak in world population in about 20 years, and a drop to zero within 60 years. My conclusions align pretty well with those of people who have done a far more thorough job of studying these things.

ART: That's quite a story.

BRAD: I wish it were just that. If I still believed in God, I might be able to delude myself into thinking that a miracle will happen to make everything okay. Unfortunately, as you used to say, "it ain't gonna happen," and the people who think that it will are dragging their feet, making things worse for all of us. Recently, I've been feeling that it's all hopeless.

ART: Remember what I used to tell you about feeling sorry for yourself.

BRAD: Like your dad said, "Run in place until you kick yourself in the ass." I remember.

ART: So what are you doing about it?

BRAD: I took this test job with a non-profit that's building a national network to monitor ecosystems. It's pretty cool, and a way to contribute to the science that can tell us how things are changing.

ART: That's great, son.

BRAD: I'm worried that it won't have any effect on what's happening, though.

ART: Let me guess. With all the information that's already out there, the idiots won't listen. What are the chances they'll pay attention to even more data?

BRAD: They're also enthusiastically trying to destroy ecosystems. They just don't value nature, except as a pile of resources to be exploited. Come to think of it, that's the way they view people too. Remember why I didn't pursue astronomy in school?

ART: Vaguely. I'm afraid I had something to do with that.

BRAD: That was during the '70s energy crisis. I figured it would be irresponsible to focus on what to me felt like mental masturbation while humanity was in danger of burning itself up by pursuing energy just to have more. Later, with the asteroid thing and the understanding of the Sun's future, I realized that science could illuminate what's coming, and how to create a better future, in part by recognizing and confronting threats. I was more interested in using science to explore options than contributing to the science itself, but it was important to know the science first. You showed me that education was key to getting people to even pay attention, and that's part of why I stuck with you on that; the other part, the biggest part, was that I loved working with you.

ART: I suspected that.

BRAD: But now I realize that even education's not enough, just like science isn't enough. Even knowing the options isn't going to solve the problems, or being able to show clear logic leading from cause to effect.

ART: I think you're going off the deep end, there. People just need to be shown...

BRAD: ...How to pursue enlightened self interest. I know you believe that. It was behind everything we did together. Unfortunately, beliefs are far more powerful, particularly when they're shared by one's community. They become part of our identity. When you challenge them, you challenge people's identities. You throw into question the value of all the things they did in support of them. You threaten to devalue their lives.

ART: But if they realize they're wrong, they can find something better. More happiness, to use your term.

BRAD: Not if a large part of their happiness – and the power that enables it – derives from their community. You'll have to convince the whole community, or force them into a situation where the community loses influence over them, like what happened to me after you died. Also, the risk of finding something better is losing what you already have; and it is a risk, because you may not find something better.

ART: That's an interesting theory...

BRAD: You taught me to think for myself, but you had your own value system superimposed on top of that, which because you were so smart, and had so much experience, I didn't really question until you were gone.

ART: Anecdotal evidence.

BRAD: Sometimes that's the most convincing kind. Like when it's yours.

ART: I think you're wrong, though I respect your reasons.

BRAD: You're proving my point: It all comes down to beliefs. And, for the record, I still respect yours. I also respect your judgment, as much as ever. So what do you think about all this? Is there hope?

ART: The people I grew up with did some amazing things in just a few decades, under similar conditions, with a lot at stake. Yours can too, if you have the stomach for it and don't give up. Take a deep breath, start running in place, and then do what needs to be done. I'll bet you won't be alone.

Deathwatch

I have a lot of respect for Hospice. Twenty-four years ago, their caregivers helped my family deal with the hardest aspects of my mother's rapid death from untreatable cancer – both in easing her pain and helping us cope. Now, the organization is doing the same for another loved one, who has luckily survived to face the consequences of old age: so-called "natural causes."

The signs of impending death are as unmistakable as they are heart-wrenching. When you see them, you begin to comprehend the incomprehensible, that there are some situations where death is preferable to living. In such situations, typified by the body's inability to overcome the forces that are breaking it down, the mind looks for a way to escape. That escape is withdrawal into an imaginary reality that at first, like dreaming, tries to sort out what's happening, then at the end appears and feels like the passage into another, more benign world. Many of us who haven't faced death directly, or crave hope for a positive outcome as our loved ones suffer, find solace in the idea that the imaginary world is real. As death approaches, for us and for others, we want it to be as positive as possible, and with luck and help we can prepare the mind to make it so.

Twenty years ago, my father had a much different experience. He died alone of a heart attack in a bathroom at work. There was no opportunity to save him, no time to say goodbye. Sometimes he would say he wanted to die with his boots on, but I doubt he meant anything like this. In retrospect, there were signs: he smoked; tired easily during long walks after we moved up in altitude from sea level to nearly 5,000 feet; and was stressed by a grueling work schedule (in my early 30s, I had trouble keeping up). We were on a deathwatch and didn't know it. I suspect that in the short seconds before my father died, his always active mind went through its own escape process, a rapid shutdown that I hope ended with a flash of peace.

These experiences are part of a continuum, which appears to vary in scale, age, and time: a single death or multiple deaths; time lived before death; and an irreversible decline lasting an instant or years. The global mass extinction event currently underway represents an extreme part of that continuum: in terms of just humanity, there may be billions of deaths following a few hundred thousand years of our species' existence, and a decline of a few decades. Like my parents who smoked, we're poisoning ourselves and the other species that keep the planet habitable; if we continue for even a few more years, there will be so much poison that we can't stop the worst consequences. My current job, enabling the systematic, sophisticated monitoring of ecosystems, will then merely serve the purpose of documenting the death of a planet.

It's easy to see the growing pervasiveness of entertainment. I've used it myself to keep my stress level down when I get too caught up in the bad stuff that's happening. Our species seems to be like a large, dying patient whose body is overwhelmed and whose mind – aided by technology – is creating delusions to deal with the impending shutdown. Science has already shown that time is running out for deciding whether to cure ourselves or to preside over our own deathwatch. I fervently hope that we choose to salvage reality.

Deathstopping

If you've read my poem “Deathstoppers,” you probably noticed that I've been trying to follow the strategy laid out there.

The team deployed throughout the world

Its goal was crystal clear

To stop the death that threatened all

Without a shred of fear.

Whether they call themselves “environmentalists,” “sustainability activists,” “greens,” or “conservationists” (among many names), a large number of people are working toward the same ultimate goal. In my case, I've just defined a set of values which recognizes the extinction of species and destruction of ecosystems as inherently bad, and am trying to live by those values.

Its members started with the worst

The ones who didn't share

Who raped the land for fun and gain

And cared not what was fair.

They called them out for what they were

Made their acts a source of shame

No one took their money

For fear they'd share the blame.

For most of my life, I had the philosophy of “live and let live.” Out of respect (and an overdose of humility), I assumed that all but a few people ultimately wanted the same things and had the same values. With awareness and adequate tools to connect the dots about what was happening to all of us, we each contribute to a better world in our own way.

Then I found out I was wrong. A lot of people are willing to sacrifice the lives and livelihoods of others, even the future of our species, for their own personal gain. They have also adopted ideologies and beliefs that shield them from understanding or feeling responsible for their actions. Like children who haven't developed a healthy, mature empathy for others, they need to be taught – or forced – to care, so they won't harm others as well as themselves.

They will continue for as long as they are rewarded for their bad behavior, primarily through wealth and power. To stop them we have to both educate them and stop rewarding them. Like children, they need to recognize their actions as a source of shame. Choosing not to buy from them and freely using terms like “planet-killer” work toward those ends.

Next the team set out to change

How much it cost to live

By growing more of Nature

So freely it could give.

The land provided basics

Renewable each year

While factories made less and less

Of unnecessary gear.

When people have power over others' ability to meet their needs, consumption becomes decoupled from the physical reality that supports those needs. The biosphere's innate sustainability stems from the direct contribution of species to the system that provides their needs. If people are able to survive by more direct interaction with the natural world, fewer resources will be subject to the whims of others, which have historically produced far more waste.

People learned to value life

In all its varied kinds

The team showed how we're all the same

Part of a web that binds.

As we reestablish our bonds with other people and other species, we will hopefully rediscover that life is to be cherished instead of used and disposed of, because we are all part of it.

Though some remained who wanted more

The earth chose what they had

Slowly wounds began to heal

As good replaced the bad.

Disaster was averted

Death slowed to a crawl

Love and health became the rule

The team became us all.

My vision of the ideal result is summarized in these last words. It is what I hope for, and what I work for.

We are, unfortunately, still in the early phases of this process. Many of us don't even realize how much is at stake, having trained to be ignorant and accepting of the system that is ruining our world. I like to think that I'm a pretty smart person, and I didn't get it until I was in my forties. Now, in my fifties, I'm starting to be an active part of “the team,” in word and more in deed. But time is running out, and the planet-killers, I'm afraid, are winning.