In Pursuit Of Waste

My latest progress in the pursuit of a simple, objective measure of values has yielded a testable model based on estimated distributions of resources throughout the global population. I’m presenting the model as a set of concepts and simulations for use in discussing and exploring ideas and explanations about the world as I’ve been doing in my first blog, Idea Explorer, and more loosely in my fiction as embodied in the BIOME/Lights Out books and the Simulated News blog.

To the extent that my current simulation is applicable to actual history, I can characterize my lifetime as coinciding with a period of human history when economic activity in the production of waste has had more value than people and is likely to result in the extermination of our species along with many others that are even more undervalued. I have personally pursued waste, which I define as resources that do not meet basic biological needs, and/or they eliminate the ability of others to meet those needs. In particular, I have devoted most of my life to the enabling and development of technology that can acquire and manipulate the world’s resources at an accelerating rate. 

One aspect of the simulated world’s future is rapid production of waste even as the world’s population crashes, which might be explained by the influence of artificially intelligent machines taking the place of humans to serve the purpose of their own continuation as the ultimate embodiment of waste. While I have not directly contributed to that, I have enough experience and knowledge to closely follow it and use some of its precursors in my own work, making such speculation more than an extrapolation of science fiction.

Interest in the role of values in the determination of humanity’s fate has always had an emotional component, alternating between the elation of discovery and the guilt of being part of a global killing machine that enables that discovery. What felt like a binary choice between personal longevity and happiness aided by employment of technology and waste creation, and long term longevity of the biosphere that encompasses and nourishes life, has been largely verified by study and evidence. Hope has driven the search for a third choice that optimizes both, and frustration has accompanied failure in that search. 

Technology as the answer to many of humanity’s wants, fulfilled by waste, has sabotaged our desire for a long future that only a replenishable and diverse habitat can provide. In the terms of the simulation, serving the value of waste ultimately overwhelms the values of habitat and people. By pursuing waste as a default in a culture where personal survival is contingent on it, contribution to the demise of life has been all but inevitable.

Transitions

As the citizens of my fictional simulated world "Hikeyay" begin their transition to a healthier life based on the best recommendations of my multi-year effort to model humanity's past and future, I am attempting a transition of my own in a world that is headed in a very different direction.

For more than twenty-five years I have sporadically attempted to identify my own values, related goals, and means for realizing them after mostly disappointing results from studying and trying others. As I near my sixtieth birthday, that attempt is mostly complete, and I don't have much time left to act on the result – the equivalent of Hikeyay's execution of a global strategy to delay extinction as long as possible.

The competing responsibilities I've grappled with for more than a decade and wrote about in Death Stoppers Anthology are still in play. Global responsibility, anchored in humanity's survival and defined by our relationship with the rest of the biosphere, is – I know now – best served by helping other species survive and thrive by decreasing ecological impact, which reverses the drivers of extinction (habitat loss, invasive species, pollution, population, and over-harvesting). Personal responsibility, tied to maximizing individual happiness and longevity, is served by increasing personal ecological impact up to a point (the happiness peak); and is served by decreasing ecological impact if beyond that point. 

My simulations show that a globally significant number of people began passing the happiness peak after 2001, meaning that human pain and death became a consequence of not serving global responsibility. Now two-thirds of the world's population is past the peak, and the rest could be past the peak by 2030 under worst-case (and what I currently consider most likely) conditions if action isn't taken. Even if aggressive action like that contemplated in Hikeyay is taken, any delay would add more casualties and risk that consequences could multiply far beyond what even the most optimistic technologies might be able to manage.

Based on measurable variables like age and wealth, I estimate that I am at least as close to the happiness peak as the world total (a "phase" of 5.7 in the graph below). That matches my subjective experience in the realm of personal responsibility. I have always felt global responsibility, but it has grown exponentially with knowledge of my role in the future and the waning of confidence in the judgment of leaders who claim they know how to make that future better. 

The future is the result of a collaborative effort. Until now, I have chosen to mostly develop and share my own insights with others, look for ways to contribute to a comparable reality, and do what appears right until and unless it shows signs of being the opposite. With the equivalent of a better roadmap for identifying appropriate action, my new transition involves interpreting that map and trying what it suggests.