From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Fri Mar 12 2004 - 22:54:53 GMT
Dear Jim,
I'm afraid I don't recognize what you wrote 11 Mar 2004 14:04 +0100 as a
proper response to my question (How do you connect George Carlin's eco-rant,
which you reproduced 10 Mar 2004 16:38:31 -0800, with Pirsig's Quality
levels?).
Carlin's point was that the earth is not in trouble. I don't see how
Pirsig's claim that (patterns of value from) lower levels should not
dominate (those from) higher levels has relevance here.
This claim also happens to be a part of Pirsig's ideas that I don't find
very useful: patterns of value cannot dominate patterns of value of another
level, because (in my way of defining them) levels are discrete and patterns
of value of different levels are of completely different types. Higher level
patterns of value cannot exist without specific types of patterns at the
next lower level and can have a marginal influence on the stability and
versatility of specific patterns of value at the next lower level, but
that's all.
I already wrote that the earth may indeed not be in trouble 'if we only
consider biological patterns of value', i.e. if we understand 'earth' to
refer to the global ecosystem. If we understand 'earth' to refer to the
planet, i.e. to the inorganic patterns of value on a global scale, human
activities can influence them even less.
Social level human activities DO influence the global ecosystem. If we make
a mess of things, with atomic war, large scale burning of fossil fuels that
have accumulated during millions of years, large scale production and use of
toxic chemicals with extremely low biodegradability (like DDT) etc.,
diversity and therefore stability, versatility and dynamics of the global
ecosystem WILL suffer. We cannot wipe out all biological patterns of value
before wiping out ourselves (homo sapiens), however. So enough will survive
to make the ecosystem survive once we are exit. It may take a million, 10
million or maybe even a 100 million years to recover, but it will. So we
can't bring it in serious trouble, measured against the timescale of the
biological level.
We CAN also understand 'earth' to refer to global society, however, or to
refer to global 'civilization' as an intellectual level phenomenon.
Global civilization as we know it IS in lethal danger if we can
realistically expect a steep increase in radioactivity, climate changes
within a century that 'normally' take (at the biological level) thousands or
millions of years and/or a chemical environment that disrupts biological
mechanisms that have developed maybe 1 billion years ago. Even IF we would
be able to create a civilization able to survive such circumstances in time,
it would be unrecognizable from the civilization we have now. Such an
environment might well 'kill' the intellectual level altogether, throwing
homo sapiens back into a way of life comparable in (lack of) complexity to
the life of the hominids before homo sapiens. Society would still exist in
the form of familiy groups passing on between generations (by simple
copying) the severely limited behavioural options guaranteeing survival
under harsh environmental circumstances. There is a (smaller) chance that
even society would break down, that homo sapiens (or a mutated version)
would survive only in limited niches with slightly better environmental
conditions, without the possibility hominids developed to adapt to different
environments and spread over the earth.
George Carlin's 'eco-rant' is not a proper answer to ecologically concerned
people who expect humanity to make a mess of things in one of the above
described ways (or another comparable one) within an overseeable period of
time if we don't stop certain developments.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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