Conscience And The Kings

As more of my time necessarily has become consumed with job hunting, I have discovered that the options are not much better than the last time I tried to be selective based on my values and preferred work environment. This is despite the fact that I am more aware of what I want and need based on last year's breakthroughs in research and self evaluation, making the search's filters much more refined and reliable. Having intentionally framed my values around the needs of my community, global humanity, for surviving and thriving as long as possible, the issues I'm finding with my search parallel the issues I identified on a global level, and in about the same measure.

I have resisted the urge to compromise on these issues, in line with my commitment to become a "death stopper," but I now realize that my focus has been too self-centered, striving as I have for an optimum personal situation where I am with people who share similar values working toward similar ends. Instead, I may need to do what feels like climbing back into the trenches of war, and use my new-found vision and courage to make positive change wherever I go, but in a more obvious and straightforward way than I now realize I have attempted to do in the past. Essentially, I would focus on approximating an ideal world in as many situations as possible, and make my intentions clear in the process. Realistically, I expect a lot of resistance.

I have recently been studying the field of human ecology (the research variant, rather than the "making a better life" variant), which looks like the best fit to my independent research into population and consumption, and it finds evidence that healthy societies are like healthy ecosystems in that they tend to grow to take advantage of existing resources and then to resist change. Ours is not healthy. A considerable amount of scientific research has shown that as people gain more power, they are inclined to lose their natural empathy and increasingly treat other people as objects to be manipulated to gain more power. This consequence is reflected in my population-consumption model as a mechanism for people with extreme happiness to attempt increasing it despite limits to their own ecological resources. Simplistically, conscience is short-circuited by happiness, ultimately leading to lower population as perhaps one of Nature's safety mechanisms for preserving habitable environments.

A functional government would tend to offset the negative effects, using laws to replace conscience as a protective force in people's interactions and keeping power from being too concentrated, but our (U.S.) government has been sabotaged by the powerful people who want to take more than is healthy for everyone else. This has been enabled by an economy which rewards the manipulation of money with the creation of more money, resulting in an obscene wealth distribution that is further locked in by our approach to the limits of ecological resources. A small part of the population now has enough economic power to potentially own all of the resources everyone else needs to survive. Even if all of the people in that group had fully-functioning consciences (and some likely do, since these trends are statistical, not individually determinant), they could not have the information or the time to make decisions that avoid harm to some fraction of the people whose lives they can affect. Since too much happiness has a pathological effect that makes even well-meaning harm unlikely, the underlying cause needs to be addressed soon, even if we don't consider the ecological impacts that pose an existential threat if we continue exceeding healthy consumption.

If my analysis is correct, creating an ideal world could involve something like global drug addiction treatment, perhaps by creating a safe replacement as an intermediate step that would buy time for ecosystems and social systems to recover to a more healthy state, while weaning the wealthy off their happiness high. Reshaping values and reactivating consciences would have to be built into the "replacement" so it doesn't become a permanent substitute. To some extent, the entertainment industry currently serves to give the illusion of living in a different environment, and religion manages values within an imaginary construct of reality; perhaps the replacement could use components of both to achieve the desired results, and even educate people with a more accurate understanding of how the world works. Care would need to be taken so such a tool is not misused, by for instance further concentrating power among a few people.

This and other possible remedies should be openly debated before a global roll-out, following a debate about what the common core set of values should actually be (I am presenting my own preferences here). That doesn't mean such debates and remedies can't be attempted on a small scale to judge their efficacy, as long as it is done honestly and openly with all concerned; such is the essence of the focus I suggested I might personally take in the interim. To be globally useful, though, such attempts should be coordinated and analyzed, perhaps by an academic entity as part of a science project, and I would be absolutely thrilled to take part in the project at that level (I would even love to translate the results artistically, to reach a wide audience as part of the debate over broader use).

Legacy

It's time for most of us to abandon the dream of retiring comfortably, and to focus instead on leaving a legacy we can be proud of.

As a recent report highlights, our economic system rewards those who speculate, and victimizes those who work. It is also a global Ponzi scheme that threatens not only the economic wellbeing of the majority but availability of physical resources all of us depend on for survival. Essentially, we are participating in a game that cannot, nor should be, won. As I explained in a new meme, that game ─ unrestricted competition ─ can only result in the death of everyone.

I have detailed in multiple blog posts (and the upcoming book, Death Stoppers Anthology) my personal struggle with the inherent conflict between personal and global responsibility that we now face because of our proximity to global ecological limits. I shared it, along with evidence of that conflict, to be part of a conversation about how to create a future that maximizes our ability to survive and thrive as a species, and to be part of a team dedicated to realizing that future regardless of the personal consequences.

The competition that threatens us is not totally unrestricted yet, but the few who have the upper hand in that competition are focused on removing what few restrictions remain. This is especially obvious in the subversion of the U.S. political system, which made major gains in the recent mid-term elections in large part due to the weaponization of money enabled by a Supreme Court that values unrestricted competition. In a critical time when the world must be setting the stage for rapidly reducing carbon emissions (along with other stresses on Earth's life support systems), the social infrastructure dedicated to protecting common resources needed for our survival has become at-best useless, and at-worst is being co-opted to remove existing protections and make the situation much, much worse.

Many of us are held in thrall by the hope that we might still live comfortably following a life of service to the system we've been taught to believe is a legitimate source of value to the world, but in fact is dedicated to sucking us dry, just like the other "resources" that supply our pursuit of happiness as embodied by monetary wealth. For those of us who perceive the threat to our existence and that of future generations, this misperception and the hope it fuels must be replaced with a more accurate and comprehensive vision of real value that our lives can attain: a legacy that is testimony to whatever good remains in us, that is physically embodied by a better chance for the survival of our species. We must also share this vision with as many people as possible, and build up a critical mass of support so we might succeed despite the huge odds aligned against us.

Catching a Break

For the first time since before my father died nearly 20 years ago, I am contributing to something that I deeply care about, is fully in line with my personal values and skills, and could have a positive influence on the future of many people beyond my direct involvement.

As a systems integration engineer, I will be devising and performing initial tests of the National Science Foundation's National Ecological Observatory Network, working for a non-profit, NEON™, set up specifically to design, build, deploy, and manage it. The goal of the network is to monitor the ecosystems in the U.S. over a period of 30 years, enabling scientists to detect and characterize changes in a wide range of variables. Just as large-scale monitoring of weather has enabled a better understanding of climate and the ability to predict how it changes, such monitoring of ecosystems has the potential to do the same regarding the living environment; building the network is a critical step in this direction.

Of course, having knowledge does not automatically ensure that it will be used, or that it will be used to anyone's benefit. In my personal writing, I will continue to address this issue, along with the question of how to maximize the amount and quality of life in the Universe, beginning with increasing the longevity of our species and eliminating its role in the Sixth Great Extinction.

Along those lines, I look forward to studying the upcoming book Merchants of Despair by Robert Zubrin (who I worked with in the Mars Society), which examines the dark, radical side of environmentalism that sees humans as inherently evil, and (apparently from the promos) debunks some basic tenets of environmentalism. I've caught glimpses of the radical side, and am certainly familiar with the judgment of evil – but focused on what we do rather than what we inherently are, and as a consequence of valuing other species in addition to our own. Also, simplified understanding of outdated theories seems to be common to many radicals (as well as people in the general public who follow them), such as opponents of the original version of evolution who have no problem applying the crude analogue of "social Darwinism" to economics and public policy. I am particularly interested in what Zubrin finds wrong – if anything – with contemporary understanding of ecology, economics, and their overlap in ecological economics, along with other disciplines (such as climatology) which all point toward the need to reduce or otherwise radically change our impact on the rest of the biosphere to avoid catastrophe.

Hopefully, as more and better data is gathered, we will all be willing to adjust our views to conform with the reality it describes. I'm honored to be contributing to that.

Titanic Choices

My search for a new career seemed to be making great progress last week. I was sure as I attended the Transition conference last weekend that I was going to make a major breakthrough in narrowing the choices that would propel me into full-out preparation this week. Instead, I hit a familiar snag, and now I feel like I'm starting over again.

For a number of reasons, the options I had settled on were academic. I would go for a master's or doctorate degree in either social ecology, human ecology, or ecology, or revisit my minor in history to contribute to the emerging field of “big history.” My primary motivation was to pursue my research into the variables affecting consumption and population growth in a rigorous, credible way on a full-time basis. After staring potential population and ecological collapse in the face for so long, I've been compelled to work toward keeping it from happening, and my default approach has been to understand its causes and then convince people to take appropriate action (while doing so myself). In various ways, people far more knowledgeable than me have been doing this for decades, and with what I think are novel and useful insights, I'm strongly tempted to join the chorus in a more vigorous way than just publishing thoughts on blogs and in self-published works of creative writing.

I even bought some books to help make my decision. Murray Bookchin's “The Ecology of Freedom” makes a compelling case that civilization's dominant, heirarchal social structure is responsible for our ecological crisis, which was already in academia's sites as early as the 1970s. His legacy is an interpretation of social ecology, manifested as a field of study and activism, that strives to develop new and healthier ways for people to relate to each other and the rest of the natural world. Frederick Steiner's “Human Ecology: Following Nature's Lead” is a theoretical primer on the relationships between people and Nature from a more physical perspective, but with (at least superficially) the same goal as Bookchin's. Human ecology seems to be more pervasive than social ecology, perhaps because it is more of a science than a philosophy. Fred Spier's “Big History and the Future of Humanity” is the latest contribution to an effort within the history community to put human experience in the larger context of the evolution of the Universe. In its broad sweep of time and space, this latter subject best captures my personal interest as a student of the ultimate big picture. Meanwhile, I've been plodding through “Ecology: From Individuals to Ecosystems” by Begon, Townsend, and Harper, a textbook on the biology specialty that summarizes the relationships between life and its environment. My “plodding” has been mostly due to the subject's heavy dependency on biology and natural history, which I've been learning about in parallel.

The Transition conference confirmed in my mind the timing found in my own research, that the world has no more than a decade to make major changes to the way we relate to each other and Nature before disaster becomes unavoidable. Transition itself is basing its activity on the inevitability of “energy descent,” the reduction of consumption to a level sustainable by low-energy and predominantly biological resources, and making that descent as painless as possible. The experience (and reinforcing current events) made a strong case for changing my personal focus from study and hazard avoidance to mitigation and adaptation.

It's a hard fact that any academic path I take now will require a lot of new debt (bad) and from two to six years of the ten that remain before I can even make much of a difference in my chosen field, with the real possibility that the large, centralized infrastructure that supports higher education and use of such abstract knowledge will implode soon afterwards. The most practical and self-serving case is for using my current, high-tech skills to deal with my financial situation, getting all I can from the current economy, and pursuing these other “interests” as the equivalent of hobbies to try to prepare for whatever might come later.

One of my favorite analogies to the current situation is the fate of the passengers and crew of the Titanic as they discovered the impending collision with the iceberg that ended up killing most of them. In that analogy, I feel like one of the passengers who sees the iceberg, and has almost no power to do anything about it. I'm stuck belowdecks, needing a job to even leave my cabin (remember, it's just an analogy, not necessarily a good one). If I could become one of the crew (get a higher college degree), I might have a chance to influence the course of the ship, but it would require a lot more time than we have. All I can do now is shout to anyone who might be listening (such as the dozen or so people who visit my blogs and Web site) what I see and what I think should be done about it. Nearby, there are some fellow passengers who are plotting in desperation to build their own lifeboats out of local materials, certain that only the rich and powerful will have access to the existing ones. Unfortunately, the crew and richer passengers who want to get to their destination sooner are pilfering some of that material (extracting more non-renewable resources and polluting the environment) to use as fuel for the engines so the ship can go faster, either ignorant or in denial about the fact that doing so will make things much worse.

In this situation, what I need to do is clear. First I need to find a way to get out my cabin (get a job or find another means that frees me but doesn't commit me to helping the ship hit the iceberg). I have to continue alerting the other passengers and any crew I find (keep writing and talking to people). I also must try to reduce or stop the pilfering (contribute to conservation and anti-pollution efforts), and help the other enlightened passengers to build and safely position new lifeboats (create resilient, self-sustaining communities) to escape the sinking of the ship if it happens. Hopefully, the crew and captain (business and political leaders) will catch on, and try to steer the ship away from the iceberg, assisting with (or at least not hindering) emergency preparations just in case. Surviving the crash is plenty to do, but to ensure we don't all die on the open ocean, even in our lifeboats, we'll need to put some effort into provisioning and determining a course to someplace safe (possibly something I can apply my particular talents to, maybe even justifying additional education).

I'm still left with determining the details of my next step. I'm far too altruistic to take the easiest and most self-serving alternative, which would be to try to suck up to the powers-that-be so I might get into one of the cushy “lifeboats” (I'm not altogether convinced that they don't see the “iceberg,” and aren't following the simple logic of competition that might see a “collision” as the easiest way to eliminate almost everyone else). Most jobs unfortunately involve aiding and abetting accelerated consumption (“speed”), especially the high-paying ones, so perhaps I should look for something more having to do with “navigation.” This leads me back to the higher-education option, or if I can get a lot better at marketing and zeroing in on popular, positive messages, focusing on writing.

At this point, let me digress to a brief discussion of my on-again off-again consideration of higher-education. There is a lot of important, valuable work being done by academia to understand what's happening around us, but I sense that it's not getting the traction it needs in either the public's collective mind or that of our society's leadership. Heck, I'm struggling right now with the complex analysis in “The Ecology of Freedom” and “Ecology,” and I'm already inclined to read such things. Then I look at the popular culture (including what passes for news), and am appalled by the huge traction achieved by the frankly idiotic ramblings of the so-called opinion makers, especially on (but hardly limited to) the political right. Aside from my own enjoyment, getting official credit for what I learn, and contributing to a body of knowledge which is likely to be among the first casualties of civilization's unraveling, what would be the practical benefit to becoming an official part of the intelligentsia? This a variant of the argument I had with myself in high school when I realized that a career in astronomy wouldn't help deal with what I saw, even then, as an emerging entropic crisis that could render that knowledge useless. In the intervening years, I saw the quality of education decline as people focused more on facts than on understanding and real learning (and with my father, tried at huge personal cost to do something about it). Now we're all paying the price, with what I call “the appearance of functionality” dominating people's decisions about what to buy and create. When recognition of quality goes down, so does quality itself. It's hard not to ask, “What's the point of knowing something if no one else cares, or would know what to do with it if they did?”

In my Titanic analogy, I didn't ask to see the iceberg (the destruction and disruption of the biosphere we are part of and depend upon for survival, manifested simplistically as consumption of “resources” and pollution), I just heard some people talking about it (read a lot) and chose to look out the porthole and see for myself (applied my analytical skills to publicly available data and learned enough about the natural world to recognize the signs). At another time, I would have gladly accepted the judgment of many of my conservative friends that it's all a hoax, part of a grand conspiracy to take over the economy for people who don't want to work for what they get. Having gotten to know the alleged perpetrators, and come to understand that they are not only right, but have the purest of motives in trying to do something about it, I'm deeply ashamed that I lived in denial for so many years when I could have been helping. That's in spite of the fact, in my defense, that I was working on the education problem, and then, after my father died, doing a lot of much-needed growing up and self examination that led to both learning and caring about the fate of everyone on the “ship.”

This perspective hopefully lends me some credibility, to make up for what I lack official recognition for, when I ask those who are still in denial to step outside their comfort zones (open the “portholes” or go “on deck” if possible) and look around. Recognize that we're all in this together, we need each other to survive – and then, with some work, we can eventually find a better “place.” In the mean time, I'm going to keep looking for a way to get out of this “cabin,” and any help would be appreciated.