Sunday Environment rant

[degringolade]

 

Taishō period (1912–1926) / Unichi Hiratsuka/ Potara Mausoleum at Shotoku

Got a lecture last night.  Angry and hostile concerning my lack of adherence to obviously “true” beliefs such as the overwhelming goodness of democracy and the American way of life.

I am getting used to these lectures, actually they are becoming the norm.  But I have been noticing that the source of these lectures are my friends who have done well for themselves.  Now, don’t think for a moment that I begrudge their success and skill in navigating a corrupt and venal system.  That is the ecology that we have gotten around to making for ourselves.  In the end we are creatures bound by adaptation to the circumstances that we are born into, just like every creature in the world.  They have done the requisite adaptation to adjust to the inputs and pressures placed before them and maximize their personal benefits from the conditions offered.

The hard part about all this is that the system itself is value-free.  Venality and corruption are merely the mechanisms that allow an individual to deflect selective pressure away from himself.  The folks who are best capable of utilizing these mechanisms tend to rise to a position where they can further entrench these systems.  Sometimes they even manage to get other folks who those mechanisms harm to believe that the systems are correct.

The system that we swim in is the ecology of man, separate from the ecology of nature.  Truth be told, it appears that the system worked out since the beginning of the “scientific the ecologies of the natural and the man-made have been in direct conflict.  Individuals in either system are no more aware of their role than a fish is aware of water.  It is just the environment they swim in.

I suppose trying to stand away from the environment and analyze it makes one a philosopher.  I still kind of like the nomenclature of the early”scientific” period when folks who dabbled in science were referred to as natural philosophers.  Of course now, these kind of falks are thin on the ground, “scientist” being a much inflated sobriquet for technicians who took enough classes.  Whenever a natural philosopher shows up, they are usually marginalized quickly for fear the applecart might get upset. 

Nope, adaptive success for humans in the system currently extant usually requires fucking over nature in one way or another.  In the system in place here in the land o’ the free, success usually invoves fucking over other countries and fellow citizens in a manner that they can live with.

Just because you were good at actively fucking over the natural environment and your fellow man doesn’t mean that your actions were noble, you were just acting in accordance with the vagaries of adaptation.  You played the game by the rules of the moment and won. 

Just don’t think that those rules are permanent or moral.