The Pathological Altruist

[SoNotHer]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

But I think we *can* and *should* look to Nature for an understanding of ourselves and of the world we inhabit. Not so that we can learn what we should do, but so we can have some kind of ideas about what we can do. I would love for every adult in America to have a grounding in the kinds of trade-offs nature makes because all of the living things we see around us and we ourselves are the results of those trade-offs. That means I would love for every American adult to understand Darwinian theory because it gives people the tools to really start to be amazed at how Nature does things and why our world is so wonderful while, at the same time, training the mind to begin asking cost-questions.

I like that this is extending tangentially into related areas of great interest to me. I want to focus in particular on this passage. I would like to think that as a species accessing, well, at least two percent of our brains, that me might avail ourselves of four billion years of Earth engineering. Biomimicry, one of my beloved interests, does attempt this. I would also like to think that we can and should come to some understanding of evolution as something worthy of study and emulation and not an idea to run in fear from or see, in the context of religious teachings, as mutually exclusive. Either we have our sacred cosmologies, or we have evolution, but, the twain shall never harmonize like a good PBJ sandwich. (It's late. I'm hungry.)

So, as my neighbor likes to tell everyone I introduce him to, if we had some intrinsic understanding that one gallon of ancient sunlight (otherwise known as "oil" or its refined offspring "gasoline") is equivalent to three weeks of human labor @ 40 hours a week, we might understand the implications of the second law of thermodynamics, "that no transformation from concentrated to dispersed energy is every 100 percent efficient, and that the late night love call to girlfriend X across town just demanded a lot of beefy types working at .1 hp for three weeks and so on. This equation and information can be found through many sources besides my rogue, cigarette-bumming neighbor, but for convenience sake, I'll reference Pimentel's "Energy and Power" article for The Social Contract.

http://www.thesocialcontract.com/art...cle_1090.shtml

I would love for Americans to have a much better understanding of trade offs too, AJ, and I would like them to send me ten dollars or at least a Ponderosa gift certificate (still hungry) for me telling them so. If, for instance, Americans had more information on Hubbard's theory and the term "Peak Oil" than they did on what the Khardasians bought this week, we might have a much deeper appreciation for the fact that the suburbia and empire we zealously undertook in the 50s on $2/barrel oil is now far harder to maintain on $85/barrel oil. And if we were to collectively realize that the ratio of energy spent in extraction to energy (oil for our purposes here) obtained continues to tip in the direction of diminishing returns and depletion, we might in fact be able to effectively reinvent our relationship with energy, model a more balanced and enduring kind of altruism, and pack the entire 2000 in the life boats, coolers and all.

I would welcome the continued survival and non-dissipation of this discussion. I would also welcome Planetary threads on the transition movement, Peak Oil, permaculture and biomimicry, all of which I find the most interesting and useful trajectories for discussion and embrace and deployment in these times. Or, if attempting to attract acolytes, perhaps we would all enjoy creating and top dipping into threads like "The Possibilities of Better Living Through Logic," or "Why I Can't Prepare for Post-Peak Oil Apocalypse Homesteading with a Histrionic Harpy."

Meanwhile, Tapu, I fear you have reshifted your onus (that doesn't sound right and conjures that oh-so-pretty name for the 7th planet) back to me. Hmmm. Well, I shall do my best to find excerpts from the play to satisfy your inquiry. Meanwhile, for God's sake read Stoppard because he's funny, brilliant and, well, yes, biologically related. Now if only I could convince his manager that a millenium-old mitochondiral separation is still technically related and that royalty sharing keeps families strong and snuggly close.

In other news, I need to sleep. I'm shooting arrows in a few hours with my shooting arrows friend. Better that I not be so sleep deprived as to think her Envoy's hubcaps a target.

Thank you all for a jolly good discourse, and happy Saturday morning to you.