Struggling for Survival

[Iron Juggernaut]

I've got a large collection of books that all deal with different aspects but ultimately they are one and the same question (although I must admit that I didn't know all the books were to be like that when I bought them).

I didn't become aware of their similar interest focal points- from climate change over shortening resources and intoxication of the environment to financial collapses and economies heading for awful levels of debt, with our societies and civilization facing such perils and dangers-- why it is that we refuse to react at all with the obviously strongly recommended determination and unity, although doing so would be of vital interest for us as a species, and decisive action would be needed to be agreed upon by all. Or in other words, why it is that we refuse all the time to draw consequences from the past although we could perceive the patterns from past cycles so clearly, if only we were to look close enough and perform thorough examinations. Why do we not learn in the face of so much opportunity to learn?

In my collection, I came aware of several books, which originally I seemed to have picked by random chance and random opportunity, but now see falling together- though perhaps I'm making the connection. Anyway, I got some new ones, and also read again the two older ones I already had, with a slightly different, more power-political thought process in the front of my mind. And I would like to nail some summaries and thesis to the gate since it might be of interest for some. And if not, it certainly cannot hurt anything.

There has been a lot of hacking and slicing over competing market philosophies, free thought and opinions, global warming, politics, economic interests, logic and ratio on this website as a whole. So let me also add this contribution to these kinds of topics, in addition to them perhaps being of interest to the onlookers, and think about it for a moment. I will mention brief notes about typical key factors for the historic fall of past societies, reasons for why we will not and do not act in the face of threatening amounts of problems, and in how far this has to do with concepts and terms like rational decision-making processes, egoism, and indeed altruism.

I once described myself commonly to others as a realist; and as a rational thinker. While the first description can support itself, I came to realize that with the latter I was lacking precision, just leaving it to just that label alone, and that without openly and concisely referring to implications I silently take as granted and natural. I nevertheless always attach several supplementing qualities to it that gives the term "being rational" it’s final meaning by definition: by adding orientation to it. One thing I thought a lot about since I took a leave of absence from the board for personal exile was the need to understand that being rational and/or reasonable can lead to totally different decisions, behaviors, and actions we take. As with all things, sometimes it's for the better, but sometimes it's for the worst. We can work for our survival reasonably and rationally. Unfortunately, we can also decide our endings; for perfectly reasonable, rational, logical arguments that we fully understand. And this is a dilemma because it seems to cause a major cultural deadlock in our global society that prevents the problems we face from being acknowledged and properly addressed for solving them while there is still time. Or for some things, while there was time.

It would be a discouraging implication for the potential of anyone here to assume for even just a second that I really could have been the first to have had these ideas. I certainly was not, that is to say these are merely my summaries. But for the sake of comfort and making this text more understandable, I will restrain myself from detailed quoting and cross references to existing knowledge bases and works. It also increase the work required for me to do without really adding a big positive effect. I mean this is no academic paper that must qualify for and conform to any standards of such variety. So, I've basically thrown it all together and hope I succeed in turning it into one overall argument and depiction.

Let’s begin with some general statements which may serve as kind of a preamble, if you all will excuse me on this for lack of a better term, for the rest where we go a bit deeper into the details.



General Statements

1. All human behavior is egoistical in nature, even in that any rational decision-making and weighing of options depends on standards perceived as valid by the individual making them, even where assessing of one's own standards shall bow to standards and demands of others.

2. Rational behavior tends to be destructive in the long run, since it is based on egoistical motives in the meaning of statement #1. And beyond this, it favors the strong at the cost of the weak. An economy basing on egoism as its primary motivation aims at eliminating if not preventing in the first place any competition. Furthermore, it disconnects itself from any responsibility or service for the community. Ultimately from this it destroys both the community and itself– doing so because of rationality-- and as a result reasonable decision-making.

3. Rationality therefore needs complementation or a balancing method by altruism to evade destructive effects caused by itself and to evade self destruction. The weighing of altruism against egoism again includes an egoistic element, as I mentioned in statement #1, so long as altruism is not represented in a manner that is truly selfless and full of love for the interest of others, which is agape in the understanding of common religious tradition comes the closest to. We want to differ between general altruism and agape therefore.



Specific Statements

4.) Any community can only survive if it consumes no more resources than can be replaced naturally by the ecosystem the said community resides in. The smaller the resource basis of a community (by its own fault or as an environmental reality the community was confronted with from its beginning on) the worse its chances are for any kind of long-term survival, let alone in the favorable sense of the idea.

5.) A population growth/size ratio beyond a level were sustainable management of natural resources is possible marks the beginning of a plummet for the quality of the community that ultimately must end in its total collapse. That is, if it's not being stopped by a decline in population size below the level of then-actual and sustainable resources management again, which will be a lower level than before. If the loss and damage has become too great, the environment at some point be unable to recover correctly and thus cannot replace enough resources as would be needed to supply the population size currently in place, so the temporary losses turn into permanent losses.

6.) Permanent losses minimize survival chances for future generations by marking options that are no longer on the table since they have been consumed. All consummation of resources that do not get replaced by nature within the frame of time relevant for human evolution (like metal ores, oil, natural gas, etc.) are permanent losses, and will never be available again to mankind from the on. There are resource types that, if consumed, are either sustainable or are permanently lost from the very beginning on when marked to be consumed. Gluttonous levels of consummation of sustainable resources turns them into permanently loss resources.



That's all I really have to say about that. Though to continue on a relevant path, the planet is filled with humans like never before in its history. The level of development and living conditions of 15% of the global population (the "happy few" in the industrialised first world, mainly residing in the Western Hemisphere) strictly contrasts to those that the lower 70% to 80% of the global population have to deal with. Millions are needlessly dying each and every year from starvation, disease, and wars fought for precious resources. The reaction to misery and suffering is often either apathy or political and religious fanaticism- the latter only fueling the conflicts of the present and near future. Given resources in food, (like fertile areas for agricultural activity) are disappearing, are eroding, or have been overused to the point that they are useLESS, we live in a time when we realise that the practical carrying capacity of the planet maybe is much, much lower than the idealistically assumed, theoretical, and ideal carrying capacity. Global demand already seems to be beyond what the natural ecosystem can support and sustain. The statistical numbers in correlation with my previous statement seem to confirm it.

We have only just begun to understand that every intensifying for the necessity of food production also intensifies the contamination and destruction of the environment. Indeed, also the stress put on natural resources like water reservoirs, functioning ecosystems with their incredibly sensitive and complex balances, and the need to use pesticides and fertilizers. And what's worse is that often the quality of the food is more inferior the more effort is put into intensifying the production process and lowering the end prices for consumers at the same time. The level of planetary garbage mounting and intoxication of the environment, from aerial emissions in relation to nanoparticles and chemical agents in the water, ground, food, and air, to plastic waste dumps in the oceans that reach the size of the expanse of Alaska for each and every single one, are already life-threatening in certain places, but threaten human and animal health around all the planet (now and increasingly forecasted in the future) putting the chances of the next generation more and more into question, if they already haven't been condemned to damnation.

The more comfort we have at risk, the more we seem to be willing to still doubt the implications of these issues, though I was focusing on climate change and global warming. The question is: can we really be sure that the living style we enjoy in our industrialized nations can be maintained without going at the cost of future generations, and ultimately our own future? Can we safely assume that it is only a question of comfort when talking about these issues, ignoring that maybe in reality it is the more a question of survival the lower we are positioned in the global hierarchy of things? Will our thinking about justice and work-related rewards really make a difference for our fates when we are being faced with vital resources growing thin in the global "town" we now live in?

“If I don’t grab the nugget, then somebody else will”, and, “First let the others demonstrate their good will and best intentions, then I’ll follow!” Are these truly wise strategies, or are they maybe the repositioning of addressing necessities to a place and time after our time here, and after our life= into the time of our afterlife?

In the works of Mr. Joseph Tainter, for example, you find the argument that complex societies like our current one (but also historic ones that he lists as examples) should be expected to be especially capable to deal with problems and threats to their existence deriving from fluctuations in their material basis of living, their supply with needed resources, and productivity. He argues that their complexity is their resolution for problem-solving, competence, and adaptability. He argues that when a society realizes that it is threatened and that there are dangerous problems putting the survival of it in question it would start to address the problems and eventually adapt to new conditions if needed, implying that its range of problem-solving options is the more diverse the more complex its social and economic structure is. He also follows a manner of thinking that says that crisis occurs at times when the economical exploitation of the ecosystem a community is living in does not produce the revenues anymore of earlier times, and that as a result productivity therefore drops.

Obviously this reflects widespread popular thinking among people today. Why you need not look any further than a blog or a political newspaper. But maybe that is only because it is a self-reassuring method of feedback to ourselves that as long as we do not see ourselves addressing problems, the problems are not really threatening, if they are at all existent. That’s why we must not act on them. Can we really be sure that we do not follow this thinking for one reason only? Because it reassures us that we do well in not changing, not acting; living in assumed eternal comfort and not being in danger at all? Isn’t that just a too seductive view on life, our life in the first world? While it certainly is the easiest, cheapest, and most comfortable way we could imagine for our future, it certainly is not the smartest if history has taught us anything.

There exists an evident parallel between Mr. Tainter and the thinking of the Classic Economic Theory (capitalism in Anglo-Saxon interpretation, I mean)- saying that the total quantity of available resources is not really relevant in the end, and that all things really depend on are the amount of financial investments in exploitation. And in research to find modified approaches and procedures to do so. It is in this influential theory that monetary options reside above and decide on the material options. The problem, of course, is not a shortage in resources. Actually quite the contrary; rather a shortage in capital exclusively. The material reality somewhat gets neglected, much like the human reality. Resources, items, and persons all get translated into monetary equivalents. I have not bothered to hide that I consider this theory to be blatant bull**** and extremely dangerous both for the environment and human community survival, but also their members’ self-esteem and dignity.

The argument that eventually ecological collapse all alone could eventually cause cultural and civilization collapse Tainter rejects as well. The problem I have with his position here is that he is right in pointing out that the fall of some societies indeed took place under exclusion of explicit environmental factors. The Soviet Union is a recent example. But he tends to say that environmental factors never have been, never are, and never will be sufficient to cause the fall of a civilization. And this is something I part with his views on.

However, history teaches us many lessons on complex societies that collapsed in times of crisis as a result of panic and a lack of action in general, as well as in times of explicit environmental collapses- even though they were equipped with the needed competence and potential that should have enabled them to address, solve, and survive the crisis that instead was what destroyed them. Therefore, Mr. Jared Diamond, in direct reference and reply to Mr. Tainter, focuses on such examples as Easter Island, the Pitcairn and Henderson Islands, the Anasazi in Chaco Canyon, the Maya in Central America, the Vikings in Greenland, the genocides in Rwanda, the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and the undecided fate combined with huge environmental challenges of China, Australia, and the state of Montana. The Highland of Indonesia and the Japanese Tokugawa shoguns he gives as examples for illustrating why other societies were able to react to self-constructed threats and dooming environmental challenges, and by addressing them, survived crisis and existed for long periods of time therefore.

But the first examples lead us to asking this single question: why is it that societies, by reasoning and despite no hint and evidence for the disaster unfolding being hidden from them, nevertheless have chosen a path and behavior that leads to their evident and ultimate self-destruction and extinction of their population either by not taking action or by investing into the wrong strategies for acting?

Of the authors I have read since I took a leave of absence here on the board who debate on these issues (mainly Arnold Toynbee, Carroll Quigley, Jared Diamond, and Joseph Tainter), I found Diamond to be arguing the most convincingly, and describing most precisely his observations. Of course, some will find and have found his work to be repetitive.

Diamond at times agrees with Toynbee. Both authors see the collapse of cultures also being caused by small elites that failed to govern the community correctly and with the minimum amount of balance necessary between egoism (self-centered interests: privileges) and altruism (community-focused interest that includes generations to come).

Both authors also agree that where you want to ensure that governors govern for the interest and benefit of the people, the people must make sure that those governing them are affected by the consequences of their governing the same way they, the ordinary, are affected. That’s a practical implementation of the old saying do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If governors can avoid negative consequences suffered by the many when choosing for something that benefits their personal interest, the probability that they will do that increases dramatically. But different to Diamond, Toynbee, like Tainter and many other authors of their branches, ignore or minimize the role of environmental factors in the collapse of societies.

Societies would be expected to react when they realize there are problems. But many have not, until their extinction that was not so much caused by murder, but suicide.

And I have the very bad feeling from reading their works, and seeing it confirmed when monitoring politics, economics, and ecology as well as environmental developments. On the television, in the newspaper, on the Internet. That our global civilization today just repeats the errors of history once again demonstrates this suicidal pattern. That we are not reacting in time, or perhaps that we did not react when there still was time.

An important question that stems from this is: why is this so; and is the dynamic of the answer to this question still steering our fate for the worst?

One could point at individual wrong decisions causing collective erratic developments and collective wrong decisions in the aftermath of these decisions. One could hint at interest conflicts and lobbyism, group dynamics and the self dynamics of actual conditions and processes that already have been triggered, wanted or unwanted, knowingly or unknowingly. More systematically, there are four scenarios for why societies do not act in the face of vital problems threatening their existence:

1. A problem does not get recognized before it has become existent, or is misrecognized.

2. A problem does not get perceived as a problem, although it is real and does exist.

3. After realizing a problem, nothing is done in order to solve it.

4. The attempted solution to a problem fails.


Allow me to explain further on this:



1. A PROBLEM IS NOT RECOGNIZED BEFORE IT HAS BECOME EXISTENT, OR IS MISRECOGNIZED.

1a) It may be because the society has no matching previous experiences to which it could compare.

Examples are:


- the introduction of rabbits, foxes, hawks, and other foreign species in Australia's ecosystem, which made it inhospitable for the most part as far as animals are concerned and an out-of-control evolutionary sandbox.

- the introduction of foreign diseases such as cholera, small pox, measles, etc. to the native populace of the Americas upon the arrival of the Europeans, which resulted in most of them dying out.

- the Norse in Greenland who saw a vegetation reminding them of that in their home of Scandinavia, but did not know initially that it grew many times slower than in Scandinavia, and erosion became a greater problem once they started to chop away the foliage and tried farming with sheep and cows. Vegetation destroyed grew much slower than they used to know from Scandinavia; it was not replaced as fast, the soil was exposed to the elements for longer time, and so starvation in the end was the result when the Viking society collapsed in North America. They also did not foreseeing that opening of trading routes from Europe to the Far East made their most precious trading resource, ivory, less valuable; furthermore, the society in Greenland became more and more isolated from Europe when growing levels of sea ice interrupted shipping during the Medieval cooling age, depending upon the people there for imports, resources, and a source of income.


1b) Earlier knowledge and experience is so old that it's been forgotten, or it’s relevance for the actual problem is not recognized.

Examples are:


- the Anasazi in Chaco Canyon, falling victim to eroding agricultural soil and a drought in the 12th century since they had no writing and thus no scriptures transporting down ways used to contend with earlier droughts.

- the Maya, whose society fell victim to a drought in the 9th century. They had a written down what to do if one hit, but it exclusively dealt with heroic stories about their kings and priests- yet contained no weather reports and real agricultural advice.

- a great drought in the region around Tuscon in the 1950s, which was answered by a boom in building golfing resorts that needed ridiculous amounts of artificial watering that caused havoc on ground water levels.


1c) Conclusions are based upon false analogies.

Examples are:


- the Norse in Greenland and their whole situation with erosion and vegetation, which I've already discussed.

- the Maginot Line in WWII. France was assuming the Germans would fight them by the same tactics and strategies like they had in the Great War, without alteration; instead the Germans flew over it with the Luftwaffe, bombed the French into submission, sent in fleets of paratroopers to infiltrate the country, and then stormed it with Blitzkrieg tactics.


2. A PROBLEM IS NOT PERCEIVED AS A PROBLEM, ALTHOUGH IT IS REAL AND DOES EXIST.

2a) The cause of the problem cannot be seen, is beyond perception.

Examples are:


- Mesopotamia: nutrients in the soil get used up by over-farming or erosion and washing-out; also similar to what happened with Australia and some early American colonies.

- Mining activity releases copper and acid leaches that pollute ground water, sediment layers, etc.; faced by India in the 1930s.


2b) Decision makers are too far away from the location where the action takes place.

Examples are:


- In Montana, logging corporations did not send managers to the forests they were farming; as a result they did not see that the high level of undergrowth was becoming a problem that allowed huge firestorms to set ablaze large areas high in trees that would not have burned as easily by themselves if they would have been surrounded by dense undergrowth. This resulted in one of the greatest forest fires in United States history.

- The people, living on the very small Island of Tikopia (just over a thousand people total) had all areas of their island in sight from everywhere, making clear to every person that whatever happened to the land must necessarily effect all the others too, and that the land and its resources are limited. That’s why sustainability has become the total top priority in their ways of how they use their land for farming and benefiting from renewable resources. Strict birth control also is a critical precondition for their very survival, let alone success.


2c) The problem manifests itself very slowly, in a slowly growing trend with huge fluctuation.

Examples are:


- Global Warming; negated time and again being referred to not as micro-cycles that represent just natural and short-lived fluctuations of global temperatures.

- the periods of droughts that killed the Anasazi and Mayan civilizations.

- the cooling during the Middle Ages that isolated Greenland and Norse settlers more and more from Europe.

- "creeping normality", as in a process of yearly averages slowly but constantly falling until the general normality has constantly fallen as well- so slowly that nobody bothers taking note of it.

- "landscape forgetfulness", meaning that human mind does not become aware of constant slow changes in the landscape it resides in. But seeing pictures of that landscape and how it was years ago reveals dramatic changes, no exceptions. One of the most striking examples of this are glaciers- shown to be gradually disappearing now, not to mention the growth of deserts all around the globe.

The Tokugawa shoguns I mentioned earlier had such an amount of direct control and direct power that they were able to quickly react to the disappearance of forests in ancient Japan. The destruction being inflicted on nature made the dramatic consequences obvious to the human eye. Today, Japan’s forests all are managed and cultivated with care; they cover 3/4ths of Japan now.


3) AFTER REALIZING A PROBLEM, NOTHING IS DONE IN ORDER TO SOLVE IT.

The various motives listed here are hard to be strictly differed from each other. Often they are mixed.


3a) Conflicts of interest.

These can result from rationally concluding that not doing something may be profitable for one's own self, despite the fact it will be costly for the others. The decision not to accept responsibility for something even when one has done, or not to address a problem for other reasons, therefore is rational; nevertheless, it is open to attack by ethical arguments.


3b) The perpetrator knows that he will get away with it.

Examples are cost-effect calculations in the face of weak jurisdiction. Again, these are rational considerations that sound logical in themselves, but are open to attack by ethical arguments:

- the profit from violating a rule or legal demand may be bigger than the penalty for the violation.

- ineffective economy branches are kept running or aren't modernized, because they receive voluminous subsidies keeping them alive.

- woodcutting companies may sign contracts and pay a lease for using a certain piece of land for a limited time. Logic tells them that in that time they should make as much use of it as possible so they try to achieve the maximum quota of cutting trees. When the contract ends, the owning nation and local people are left to deal with the eroded land and long-term consequences.


3c) Egoism.

“It may be bad for you, but it is good for me.” Examples:

- instead of investing into modernization and improving working conditions and loans for workers, a board of directors decides to raise their own bonuses.

- A mining company moves away after giving up a mine and does not pay for cleaning the acid leaches and properties.

- a healthy company is destroyed and its workers betrayed by investment funds in order to give foreign investors a maximum profit by bleeding the company white and exploiting its financial and economic assets beyond what it needs to stay alive and healthy; the so-called "locust plague scheme".

- "prisoner’s dilemma", a known motive in social psychology, also meaning the "dilemma of shared property". This deals with the logic of collective acting creating collective disadvantages. The individual in a group may very well be aware that doing something, like overfishing that communally-owned lake, may be bad for all others, but that the persons thinks: "If I do not catch those last remaining fish in the lake, then the other fishermen will. I could just as well catch them for myself and be done with it."
This one is tough to solve; a solution can be to enforce quotas (but controlling them needs requires the ability to give the project the force necessary). That families may be allowed to hand on the possession of a given renewable resources from one generation to the next may be a better solution or a complementing solution, because then the owning generation has a self-interest to keep the property in good shape so that there is indeed something left that can be handed over in the future. A small community also is often at an advantage, because then everybody can see with his own eyes the dimension of the community’s possessions and resources, and can see how every person's actions influence everybody, positively and negatively.

- Interest conflicts of egoism can also emerge if in a given community there are long-term collective interests for maintaining resources, but consumer interests are opposing this and want to consume them quickly no matter the benefits of maintaining them for a long-term period. This is the classic conflict between environmental protection, and the excessive exploitation of a piece of land by corporations leasing the place for short time only. You can also see it in the sometimes irresponsible mindset of the young that sometimes argues "What do I care? That's all in the far future. I want my fun now."

- Often there are interest conflicts driven by egoism between the powerful and the deciding elites, and the general population and the rest of society, especially if the elite has the means to cut off itself from the negative consequences of it's decisions. The behavior of greedy bankers in the financial crisis currently facing the United States is a prime example relevant to us today, or the rich families rallying around a dictator in a banana republic were the people are suppressed by the military. The exploiting of their position for personal gain at the cost of principles by the ENRON bosses could be mentioned, or the fight for reputation and prestige of the clan chiefs on Easter Island ruining their economy and ecology in the effort to outshine each other by building higher statues. The probability of this happening could be lowered if making sure that those in power who are making decisions cannot escape the negative consequences of their decisions and must face these consequences just like everybody else, with everybody else.

The reasons mentioned above so far prevented for the most any rational solutions to pressing, vital problems of the present; the advantage of the few prevents them at the cost of the many, and the long-term cost of all.

- Then there is irrational behavior in general, action and solutions are prevented by:

* religion and personal values
* uncontrolled population growth
* historical conservatism and traditionalism
* historic self-definition
* emotional sentimentality
* misunderstood steadiness

* the so-called "effect of lost investments", meaning that one already has invested so much into a wrong
strategy that one does not want to change that strategy if that means that all those previous investments are lost and/or cannot create any kind of retribution or reward. So one continues to invest even more into doing the wrong.

* "silence the messengers, ignore the message" tactics
* rejection of everybody who questions what one holds to be true, or is fond of
* previous false alarms

* conflict between short-term and long-term interests (George W. Bush, for example, made it governmental policy when he took power that his administration would ignore every problem that would not have the potential to seriously damage the United States within 90 days.)

* panic/mass hysteria
* Lobbyism and propaganda

* The stress of pressure from the outside subjugates members of a group to support collectively decisions instead of thinking individually and questioning these decisions critically.

* What is unpleasant and intimidating gets successfully repressed from conscience.


4.) THE ATTEMPTED SOLUTION FAILS

Examples are:

- Skills, abilities, resources and potentials that are available still are not sufficient for the task.
- A solution gets rejected because it is too expensive.
- A problem already has progressed too far and can no longer be tackled.


That's all I've though about so far.