Sustainability

Don

I am concerned. My concern is also about the fragile ecosystem we live on called the earth. It has a 'natural' balence and we seem to be all too ready to damage it and then find excuses to continue to do so.........GM!...

We should.....as in can....live in that balance but it requires effort and few of us feel able to do this.

I would also like to feel that most of us would prefer to be in that balance.

atb
j

quote:

Should they be Lindisfarne fans as well, Don?

Essential Jon! Plus pork pies and champage - which we all here enjoyed on New Year's eve.

Hope you are keeping well, and wish you a happy new year.

Cheers

Don

To hope for and want the impossible is the route to insanity.

I am absolutely certain that the human race will not as a whole or even a significant enough minority see the value in a sustainable lifestyle, or also see the need for refraining from procreation for the greater good of the race ...

Thus I give up on what others do and merely try to live by a simple collection of self-denying ordinances myself. I am not a Saint, and will certainly visit foreign lands [hopefully by ferry if at all possible] and continue to deny myself an I/C powered personal transport, only aim to keep my house at above 14 degrees Celsius for half an hour each day - thus ensuring that freezing point is never reached and pipe work freezes up - and most significantly not burden the planet with any offspring ...

But my view is that I want to quit this mortal coil - all in good time of course, and not before life's work is done - with a clean conscience that I have not taken more than my reasonable share of the finite resources of the world along the way.

The human is not a very sustainable breed. The reality is that as soon as we started cooking food, we stopped being infinitely sustainable. The catastrophe may happen in the 21st Century, or it may happen later, but in reality the catastrophe for the human race is inevitable in any case.

But once the race is reduced to a few hundred thousand living a new caveman era in the north of Europe, at least the planet and nature will survive in some form, for millions of years, no doubt.

ATB from George

quote:

Originally posted by Don Atkinson:

quote:

Should they be Lindisfarne fans as well, Don?

Essential Jon! Plus pork pies and champage - which we all here enjoyed on New Year's eve.

Hope you are keeping well, and wish you a happy new year.

Thanks Don, likewise!

George, I admire your personal, and moral contribution to minimal impact on limited resources.

I am more optomistic that mankind has a sustainable future, with or without cooked food - (but that's for another thread! )

Cheers

Don

quote:

Ponder for a moment the motivation behind the statement "We want to have a baby". Why? The only rationally plausible reason is entirely selfish. There is no altruistic outcome that a rational person could believe of the decision to have a baby. It is all in the "We want" bit of the statement. A bit like "We want a new sofa". Casting our genes into the future is the absolutely most selfish thing we can do.

Maybe some people wish to give another being a chance to experience this amazing beautiful world in which we live (for all its manifest faults).

Maybe becoming a parent sows the seeds of true altruism within a person and makes them more willing to help others, after coming to know what it is like for another being to be completely dependent on them.

Maybe some people wish to raise children in the hope that they will contribute to the great shared enterprise of humanity, by adding to the sum of our scientific knowledge or creating art.

The issues of population growth and dwindling finite resources are real and need addressing through some combination of regulation, technological fixes and voluntary restraint. But let's not turn this into a thread about how awful the human race is. We have done some great things in the short time we've been around.

quote:

But let's not turn this into a thread about how aweful the human race is.

The human race, whilst pretending to some adherence to moral values, is easily the nastiest specie to yet have emerged through evolution.

Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin ... [etc]

Let alone the smaller scale evil bastards ...

The human race needs to buck up more than just a bit to justify surviving very long.

ATB from George

Bach, Haydn, Ghandi, Newton, Plato...
The millions of people that lead ordinary decent lives without making the headlines such as yourself George. If we are created in God's image (as I think you believe) we cannot possibly be as nasty as you say. In my experience the vast majority of people I meet are friendly, pleasant and will help others in a crisis. Maybe I'm just a glass half full kinda guy (smiley!).

I agree that the vast majority of people are alright or even fantastic at a personal level [i.e. when dealing with friends], but somehow we have as a race not done enough to stop the evil devils big or small. That is a stain on every one of us. We watch evil without action [and let us squarely place responsibility with the electorate of our democratically elected leaders] until it has the potential to make an economic difference.

Let us suppose who we are more responsible for, Robert Mugabe or Saddam Hussein. But Mugabe is not going to rock the interests of Western Capitalism ...

As for the great minds of the last thousand years, mainly they are less regarded and less famous than the latest contestants in X-Factor or Britain Has Got Talent ... Though these people will be forgotten far sooner.

In a society with such squewed priorities, I doubt if the future of the next generation or two are even a flicker in a bad dream, let alone at the front of the priorities ...

I am definitely a glass half empty kind of person, as I think kindness in all too many cases is indeed selective. The really kind person is kind to the person they might be thought of thinking as being "undeserving" and yet they still are kind, and thoughtful.

That aspect is all too rare.

ATB from George

quote:

Originally posted by droodzilla:

quote:

Ponder for a moment the motivation behind the statement "We want to have a baby". Why? The only rationally plausible reason is entirely selfish. There is no altruistic outcome that a rational person could believe of the decision to have a baby. It is all in the "We want" bit of the statement. A bit like "We want a new sofa". Casting our genes into the future is the absolutely most selfish thing we can do.

Maybe some people wish to give another being a chance to experience this amazing beautiful world in which we live (for all its manifest faults).

Maybe becoming a parent sows the seeds of true altruism within a person and makes them more willing to help others, after coming to know what it is like for another being to be completely dependent on them.

Maybe some people wish to raise children in the hope that they will contribute to the great shared enterprise of humanity, by adding to the sum of our scientific knowledge or creating art.

The issues of population growth and dwindling finite resources are real and need addressing through some combination of regulation, technological fixes and voluntary restraint. But let's not turn this into a thread about how awful the human race is. We have done some great things in the short time we've been around.

The selfishness is linked to the idea that "my" baby has a greater right to the future world than "your" baby, or worse, the baby of someone I don't even know (shudder).

Are parents any less selfish? Not in my opinion. Maybe they are less likely to be looking out for themselves directly, but don't get in their way when they are seeking advantages or resources for their children.

Winky love your ideas. I learn so much. We're all in the mindset of honesty and sharing but much of the world isn't. In personal reproduction around the world, much of it is based on "Oooops!"

quote:

The human race, whilst pretending to some adherence to moral values, is easily the nastiest specie to yet have emerged through evolution.

Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin ... [etc]

Let alone the smaller scale evil bastards ...

The human race needs to buck up more than just a bit to justify surviving very long.

George, if you really believe that then I am glad I am not you. The thought of going through my three years and ten with an outlook and a belief set as negative as yours doesn't bear thinking about.

Regards

Jim

If overpopulation is an issue you (I) need to be clear where it is an issue.

It does not seem to be thought an issue in the developed West but more a "problem" for what used to be called the Third World.

Historically, drought and famine was the regulating factor. Relief programmes have done something to redress that.

However, in the future I believe it will be the developed West that will begin to suffer as the resources we depend on – not least oil – are depleted.

In a hundred years or so we might find that the Third World hunter gatherers rule the earth – again.

I don't agree with you Derry re drought and famine.

Providing good sanitation, simple healthcare for endemic infections, better nutrition and better education will reduce the Third World population rise. It has been consistently shown that communities with expectations of good health and prosperity are likely to down-regulate birth rates. It does not happen imediately and it is a long term investment for that reason (in addition to the moral and personal reasons).

Drought disease and famine cause long term rising trends. Family sizes rise to compensate for high rates of early life loss and educational attainment falls (and with it the ability to exercise choice). Infrastructure fails and death rates due to infectious disease rise, causing a short term fall in population but a social pressure to have more children. This has also happened in the face of the HIV onslaught.

Bruce

So by how much has birth rate in the Third World reduced over the last 20 years or so?

I suspect not that much and that peri-natal mortality is less too.

quote:

Originally posted by mudwolf:
Winky ..... We're all in the mindset of honesty and sharing but much of the world isn't.

Actually, I'm not. I'm a pretty selfish guy when it comes down to it. I like to see other people happy, but I won't give up much of my own stuff to make it happen. This is actually an interesting paradox. Donating time and resources to others makes us feel better/happier, we also know it will us feel better/happier, yet we still don't do much of it. I'm not sure why.

Unlike George perhaps, I don't think people are evil (some exceptions), but inherently selfish - just like me.

Re Derry's question

Birth rate is actually going down (ref http://www.indexmundi.com)
Problem is the death rate is nowhere near the same to maintain a stable population

These numbers are year 2000 to 2009 for WORLD statistics
Go to the www to see the big picture
I will leave the SIMPLE math & end result of the first 2 stats for y'all to work out

Year Birth rate (births/1,000 population)
2000 22
2009 19.95

Year Death rate (deaths/1,000 population)
2000 9
2009 8.2

Birth rate in D.R.Congo (#1 - first - birth rate)
2000 38.61
2009 41.37

Birth rate in Japan (#192 - last - birth rate)
2000 9.96
2009 7.64

How does UK compare
2000 11.76
2009 10.65

quote:

Originally posted by Derry:
So by how much has birth rate in the Third World reduced over the last 20 years or so?

I suspect not that much and that peri-natal mortality is less too.

Dropping in India for example, a nation now considered 'developing' rather than Third World. Infant mortality is dropping too, (less than in Burundi on this example.). This may initially lead to the population in India rising (outweighing the falling birth rate) but the gradual outcome is population stability(?). Maybe. My point is more that drought, famine and poverty do not control populations in poor countries, they may foster a rising birth rate.

Bruce

quote:

I am definitely a glass half empty kind of person, as I think kindness in all too many cases is indeed selective. The really kind person is kind to the person they might be thought of thinking as being "undeserving" and yet they still are kind, and thoughtful.

Fair enough George. I'm not out to try to change anyone's character or temperament - that would be... rude! I just wanted to inject another perspective into a thread that seemed in danger of being overwhelmed with negative sentiments. On balance, I think the human race has achieved and created more than it's destroyed, but I understand not everyone will agree.

As for your last point, amen to that! One of the things I dislike intensely about the Coalition Government is their apparent determination to revive the language of "deserving" and "undeserving" poor (the last Labour government indulged in this too - mistakenly in my view). If we all spent less time judging other people and more time asking how we can address our own faults and help others the world would be in much better shape.

Regards
Nigel

quote:

The selfishness is linked to the idea that "my" baby has a greater right to the future world than "your" baby, or worse, the baby of someone I don't even know (shudder).

Are parents any less selfish? Not in my opinion. Maybe they are less likely to be looking out for themselves directly, but don't get in their way when they are seeking advantages or resources for their children.

OK, I understand that, and agree with it to a certain extent (some parents *can* be very protective/territorial when it comes to their children). Your earlier post stated that the desire to have children must always in itself be selfish, and I disagree with that for the reasons I gave earlier.

Regards
Nigel

quote:

Originally posted by Bruce Woodhouse:
... My point is more that drought, famine and poverty do not control populations in poor countries, they may foster a rising birth rate.

Bruce

Time might tell. I suppose my point is that overpopulation is not an issue in the developed world because we have the means to cope. Overpopulation elsewhere means more early death or more people barely sustaining themselves.

quote:

Originally posted by droodzilla:

....some parents *can* be very protective/territorial when it comes to their children). Your earlier post stated that the desire to have children must always in itself be selfish, and I disagree with that for the reasons I gave earlier.

Regards
Nigel

The vast majority of parents are very protective and territorial. It is genetically encoded as parents who are better at ensuring the survival of their children will have an evolutionary advantage. Their genes are more likely to pass along to subsequent generations.

Parental selfishness is basically just selfish desire for procreation into the future. They give up a lot (money, freedom, quiet, relaxation) to ensure this outcome, but it isn't purely altruistic in that their is something that they get in return (survival of their genes). Very cynically, it is also possible to view the love and affection that children show for their parents is also an evolutionary artifact and advantage as it is in this way they obtain additional assurance of parental support to the age where they can, in turn pass on their genes.

quote:

Parental selfishness is basically just selfish desire for procreation into the future. They give up a lot (money, freedom, quiet, relaxation) to ensure this outcome, but it isn't purely altruistic in that their is something that they get in return (survival of their genes). Very cynically, it is also possible to view the love and affection that children show for their parents is also an evolutionary artifact and advantage as it is in this way they obtain additional assurance of parental support to the age where they can, in turn pass on their genes.

Let's accept for the sake of argument that Dawkins provides a definitive account of account of evolutionary theory (or at least its core). I'm fairly confident that *isn't* true - i.e. that there are competing interpretations of evolutionary theory within the scientific community. But suppose it is. What I still don't get is where "selfishness" comes in, in the scenario we're talking about.

For, in spite of the title of the book ("The Selfish Gene"), genes aren't literally selfish (they can't be - they have no mind). And it's not clear that genes are even metaphorically selfish, or selfish by analogy with the behaviour of individual organisms. Is a shark selfish just because it wants to eat all the little fish and leave none for the other sharks? No, not really - an act is only really selfish if the perpretator recognises: (a) that it will benefit itself; (b) at the expense of others, but (c) goes ahead and does it anyway. Human beings can be selfish; sharks and genes can't be.

Moving up a level (or three)... Does the fact (if it is one) that the sacrifice parents make for their children can be explained using "selfish gene theory" mean that these acts are "really" selfish? I don't see it that way. The explanation presupposes that altruistic behaviour is a fact, and tells a story (quite a plausible one) about the underlying mechanisms that could account for the emergence of such behaviour. The theory (arguably) explains altruism, but this is not the same as explaining it away. There are reductive explanations in science (electricity really is just the flow of electrons), but I don't think this is one of them.

Regards
Nigel

quote:

For, in spite of the title of the book ("The Selfish Gene"), genes aren't literally selfish (they can't be - they have no mind).

Dawkins wrote his book The Selfish Gene 35 years ago. In more recent re-prints, his prologue makes it clear that he doesn't suggest that genes have minds etc he simply finds it sometimes helps to view things that way At least I think thats waht he said - its been a while since I read his book.

I think we need to look at selfishness from an evolutionary view. The Territorial Imperative provides evidence that we have an in-built (evolutionary) predisposition to survive and procreate. To achieve this we need territory and this is "selfish" in its broader sense. We can't help our basic insticts. We are selfish.

This in-built instinct is clouded by the fact that humans need to form groups in order survive. A bit like wolves and dogs need to form packs. We don't operate as loners, like bears for example. In forming groups we need to consider our relationships within the group, but we tend to remain territorial and selfish to those in competing groups. Some of us have developed a broader sense of awareness and "compassion" towards others outside our own groups. I'm not convinced this had led to a new species of human being- at least, not yet.

Simple thoughts.

The subject of sustainability, selfishness, human emotions, et-al must need a thousand PhD theses to scratch the surface.

Cheers

Don

quote:

Dawkins wrote his book The Selfish Gene 35 years ago. In more recent re-prints, his prologue makes it clear that he doesn't suggest that genes have minds etc he simply finds it sometimes helps to view things that way At least I think thats waht he said - its been a while since I read his book.

Yes, he did Don (and I know he did). I didn't mean that sentence as a criticism of Dawkins. I was just being pedantic, probably

Regarding the rest of your post, we can but try to widen the circle of compassion (which may or may not just boil down to enlightened self interest). It's something we must do if we're to thrive as a race (I have no doubt we'll survive - somehow - but there's a lot more to life than mere survival, right?).