Can a change in perspective on money, wealth, etc. save our world?

The last several blog entries have focused on taking another look at some common elements of economics and asking some questions about the deeper meaning of these elements. It started with a question about the meaning of money and then proceeded to ask about other elements in light of some ideas generated in that blog. The main idea was to equate money with an underlying real value, namely the energy available to do useful work (hereafter, just energy). I noted that this energy is not any old energy but is defined by its ability to drive a work process when converted from potential to kinetic form. In the blog about wealth I laid out arguments for thinking about wealth as either the product of spent energy, where that product acts to somehow increase energy available in the future, or energy temporarily stored (as potential) within the work process itself. These views or perspectives are very different from traditional economics definitions, but I hope you can see that they are in fact related. Wealth as stored or potential energy has been a hidden basis for wealth as land, capital, etc. The latter are just the superficial attributes of wealth and economists have failed to understand the deeper underlying dynamics that give rise to those attributes being equated with wealth.

I now want to turn to a very different angle on why this energy-based perspective on money and wealth (and some consequences such as what we are borrowing when we go into debt) might be so important to our future. I take as given that mankind faces global challenges that are unlike any previously faced. The fact that they are global in scope, as well as very long-term in temporal terms, does make them fundamentally different from virtually everything that humanity as had to cope with previously, with the possible exception of Nuclear Armageddon followed by Nuclear Winter. In that latter case, as, for example with the case of the ozone destruction by chlorofluorocarbons (CFC), the threat came from one central point - launching nuclear missiles. One factor to contend with may be hard, but it is at least circumscibable and the various factors are more likely to be understood in attempts to solve the problem. Some would contend that the strategy of mutually assured destruction (MAD) was such a method.

Regardless, I argue that the current situation is orders of magnitude more complex than nuclear war. We have reached a crises point based on four major factors and many minor factors generated and amplified by the first four. The four major problems in my view are: 1) human nature, which is the overarching factor (more later); 2) catastrophic climate change caused by anthropogenic global warming, which is a huge amplifier of things like biodiversity loss; 3) energy resource depletion and decline (e.g., peak oil), which will reduce civilization's capacity to adapt to climate change; 4) overpopulation, which is the direct cause (proximal cause) of all environmental degradation.

All other global problems, such as depletion of potable water supplies, depletion of soils, etc. can be linked back to, in particular, numbers 4 and 2. Number 3 is a result of numbers 4 and 2 in the sense that overpopulation coupled with lack of wisdom when it comes to consumption habits (#1) has broken the energy bank (fossil fuel reserves). All political problems, e.g., human rights, tragedy of the commons, conflicts, are associated with number 1.

The downside of human nature, I have argued, starting back in a November blog, "Are we really so smart?", that humans, in general, are not sufficiently wise (sapient) yet to deal with the complexities of modern life that our cleverness has produced. This is a biologically based shortcoming and will not be corrected unless we find some way to do an upgrade to Human 2.0. This problem could be the selective pressure that either dooms Homo sapiens to extinction or helps us toward speciation as Homo eusapiens.

On the upside of human nature though is the capacity to think rationally through concentrated effort, when properly motivated. This capacity has produced science and an ability to build scientific theories and models external to any one individual. While people are not wise, that is they do not generally learn much from historical experiences and thus can't use their non-existent tacit knowledge to make good moral decisions on wicked social problems,science is wise. What this means is that science is a process of knowledge discovery and recording that takes place outside the other realms of human interest that builds an accessible knowledge base that never (over the long haul) accumulates false knowledge. That is, due to science's process of self-correction, in spite of the foibles of individual scientists who can make mistakes or even be dishonest, the accumulation of knowledge is always in the direction of greater understanding of the nature of reality.

When we use the knowledge from science appropriately, good things seem to happen. When we use that knowledge inappropriately (social Darwinism as a basis for Nazi atrocities comes to mind) bad things happen. My question is what makes the difference between using scientific knowledge appropriately vs. not appropriately. My tentative answer is that it depends very much on the perspectives of the majority. In other words, when the majority of people perceive the world as working in the way science has confirmed, then they will make wiser choices than when they perceive it working, say, in accordance with an ideology. The latter, as I have argued is based on evidence-poor beliefs rather than science or evidence-rich rational thought.

So in my mind it should be feasible to move society toward wise choices if we can change people's perspectives on how the world works. And that brings me to my core question. If we were to somehow get people to realize that money = energy, and much of what that entails, would they begin to make better decisions about how they relate to money, how they use it, and how they should feel about its use in governance of social organization? Would an understanding of how money relates to work and how work that makes wealth (vs. work that only contributes to over consumption) enhances life cause people in government, NGOs, markets, and consumer roles to make better decisions that lead to more sustainable practices? And, even if these were feasible, would the effects happen fast enough to make a difference - to save the world? These are the questions I want to take up next. First stop - how perceptions can be changed given the nature of the human mind. If we can't answer that one then we may be in deep do-do.

Comments

[Russ]

George,
I'm afraid I can't join in with this encomium to science. You seek to differentiate science from ideology, but the world view summed up in the statement, "science is wise", -is- ideological.
Throughout his career, Nietzsche explored the question, Can science and rationality stand alone? Can they justify themselves? He gave his definitive answer in Joyful Science section 344 where he answered: No - to value reason and scientific truth is not a rational or scientific judgement, but an aesthetic or moral one.
For example, you distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate uses for knowledge. But judgements about whether or not something is "appropriate" have to come from outside science.
So, to value science, to value knowledge, is an ideological position.

Let me clarify that I'm not in any way defending those who deny the empirical validity of science's findings. Those who deny what we can colloquially call facts like gravity, evolution, AGW, the round earth, that the earth revolves around the sun, are just cretins. As Moynihan said, you have a right to your own opinions but not your own facts.
But that leads to what is my point, that to -value- the facts is a decision which can be made only from an extra-scientific, extra-rational viewpoint.

My problem with "science", by which I mean scientists, is that in spite of this they attempt to represent their endeavors as self-justifying. The result of this can only be a soul-destroying nihilism.
Yes, as you said, knowledge steadily accumulates, but not only does it have no value in itself, scientists systematically assert that it should have none but an instrumental value. We should just be awed by technological and scientific accomplishments in themselves. In practice, everything just ends up "applied" by capitalism and mindlessly "consumed". This makes sense, since a core trait shared by corporations and scientists is sociopathy.
Just as a corporation says, my only concern is profit, so scientists typically say, I'm only here to invent anything I possibly can. What becomes of it afterward is society's affair, not mine.
The mantra, in both science and economics, is: If it can be done, it should be done. It seems that few if any scientists believe that there exists any higher value, any philosophy which could ever legitimately delineate a boundary and tell science not to cross it.
But this is what is needed most. Science is simply too important (and too dangerous) to be left to the scientists. That's part of my fight against the instrumentalist ideology in all its manifestations.

I don't think we need any more ideas from science. Western man (it is of course the Western ideology which has triumphed everywhere; I can think of no significant exceptions) had almost all the ideas right from the dawn of philosophy, with the ancient Greeks. I'm satisfied that in most ways man has progressed little since then.
In the same way that to fight climate change and confront peak oil we don't need any new technology, only the WISE (as you said) application of the technology we already have, so we don't need new ideas from science. (Or anywhere else, apparently. There really is nothing new under the sun. I believe environmentalism itself was the last significant new idea man had, and probably will have.)
What we need is the wise application of the ideas we have. But like I said from the beginning, while I think science CAN be enlisted by wisdom (though it has hardly been so far), it is not inherently wise.

[Russ]

Writing on this makes me think of one of my favorite poems, by WH Auden. I figured I'd share it here.
Though it usually seems to speak of the false promises of religion and political ideology, it can apply to science as well, to the extent that the latter seeks hegemony.

Paysage Moralise

Hearing of harvests rotting in the valleys,
Seeing at end of street the barren mountains,
Round corners coming suddenly on water,
Knowing them shipwrecked who were launched for islands,
We honour founders of these starving cities
Whose honour is the image of our sorrow,

Which cannot see its likeness in their sorrow
That brought them desperate to the brink of valleys;
Dreaming of evening walks through learned cities
They reined their violent horses on the mountains,
Those fields like ships to castaways on islands,
Visions of green to them who craved for water.

They built by rivers and at night the water
Running past windows comforted their sorrow;
Each in his little bed conceived of islands
Where every day was dancing in the valleys
And all the green trees blossomed on teh mountains,
Where love was innocent, being far from cities.

But dawn came back and they were still in cities;
No marvellous creature rose up from the water;
There was still gold and silver in the mountains
But hunger was a more immediate sorrow,
Although to moping villagers in valleys
Some waving pilgrims were describing islands . . .

'The gods,' they promised, 'visit us from islands,
Are stalking, head-up, lovely, through our cities;
Now is the time to leave your wretched valleys
And sail with them across the lime-green water,
Sitting at their white sides, forget your sorrow,
The shadow cast across your lives by mountains.'

So many, doubtful, perished in the mountains,
Climbing up crags to get a view of islands,
So many, fearful, took with them their sorrow
Which stayed them when they reached unhappy cities,
So many, careless, dived and drowned in water,
So many, wretched, would not leave their valleys.

It is our sorrow. Shall it melt? Then water
Would gush, flush, green these mountains and these valleys,
And we rebuild our cities, not dream of islands.

-- W. H. Auden

[George Mobus]

Russ,

Thank you for a thought provoking and well articulated comment.

In reference to the ideas that you put forth, particularly that belief in the wisdom of science is an ideological position. From my post, "...ideology. The latter, as I have argued is based on evidence-poor beliefs rather than science or evidence-rich rational thought."

The distinction I try to make is that one can indeed have an ideology that is evidence-rich and the result of rational thought. You are right in the sense that for me as an individual to have a kind of 'faith' in science as a process of knowledge accumulation is a kind of ideology (ideas within my head). But I would argue that the evidence I bring to bear along with a rational that includes attention to contrapositives better justifies that belief more strongly than, say, the belief in "free markets" that a libertarian might hold.

With all due respect to Nietzsche, and I do value his insights very much, his exploration took place a long time ago when the sample of scientific progress was much smaller and both pro and counter examples of knowledge due to science were much fewer (e.g. phlogesten vs. oxidation).

We have come a long way in terms of evidence that science is a unique and valid form of knowledge discovery and accumulation outside of the normal sociological realm. Note that I insist that you must not equate science with scientists. The latter are more like the pseudopodia of an amoeba. They are the searchers, often not really knowing what they are searching for. To equate them with the whole process of knowledge search is a mistake. And, incidentally, scientists are not inventors. Though individuals might, from time to time, play both roles, when a person has on the hat of a scientist s/he is thinking in a very different way than when wearing the hat of an inventor. I speak from experience on that one.

The link between individual humans and the results of the science process comes from the few and generally wiser integrators/synthesizers. These are, generally, senior scientists who have stepped back from the day to day grind of science to take in a grander view of the work that has accumulated in their arena. In doing so they often do exactly what I am suggesting in this post - they get a different perspective. Out of such perspectives come more encompassing theories. Darwin is a prime example.

As to what progress has been achieved, and you say little if any, in new ideas; I would argue that little progress has been achieved in man's ability to use knowledge in ways that enhance life for the whole planet - the general arguments made in these blogs. But I do hold the content of science as a process has progressed enormously. The knowledge we have today, stored in many forms, is many times greater in both extent and details than could ever have been imagined by philosophers down through the ages. We now have an admittedly incomplete and most likely incompleteable bank of knowledge that we have only poorly dipped into. Yet there is potential.

I agree in a very general way that there is nothing new under the sun in terms of core knowledge. I view knowledge as a hierarchy recursively expanding but preserving a core pattern. That pattern is, for me, systemness. An awkward term, it means that the whole of nature is an elaboration of a general system architecture (which, BTW includes energy flow and self organization, evolution, etc.) I plan to elaborate these ideas in the future.

But the infinite combinatorial emergence of systems interacting with systems and creating meta-systems is worth understanding. Life is just one example of this emergence. So is culture.

I suspect we will probably agree to disagree on the status of science as a process and its products as knowledge. But that's OK. Maybe there is still some common ground in wanting to find solutions to problems of survival!

George
PS. Unfortunately I am certifiably poetry challenged. I have great difficulty generating imagery from poems as opposed to prose. I have no idea why. And believe me I regret it. But thanks for sharing. I will endeavor to focus my mind on it and see what happens. Meanwhile I am sure some other readers will appreciate it.

[Pete Murphy]

George, regarding this statement in your post:

"All political problems, e.g., human rights, tragedy of the commons, conflicts, are associated with number 1."

I'd like to suggest that these things may actually be associated with number 4. Overpopulation is a breeding ground for hatred and intolerance. Germany, the fourth most densely populated nation in Europe, initiated both world wars of the 20th century. El Salvador, 2nd most densely populated nation in North America, was the scene of its worst civil strife and bloodshed. Haiti, the next most densely populated in North America, is its poorest country. Rwanda, the most densely populated nation in Africa, was the scene of its worst genocide in the 20th century. Bangladesh, the most densely populated nation in Asia, is the world's poster child for poverty and hunger. The region of Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon, the next most densely populated in Asia, is scene of the world's worst civil strife. Korea, where the U.S. joined in a bloody war and still maintains a large military presence, is the next most densely populated nation in Asia, followed by Japan - the nation that forced us into WWII.

My second comment is in regards to the following from your post:

"...humans, in general, are not sufficiently wise (sapient) yet to deal with the complexities of modern life that our cleverness has produced. This is a biologically based shortcoming..."

It may not be biologically based, but rooted in the shortcomings of economic theory. Throughout human history (until about the last half century), the interests of the common good and business (corporations) were both well-served by continuing population growth. For the common good, we needed more workers to man our factories, producing the goods needed for a high standard of living. This population growth translated into sales volume growth for corporations. Both were happy. Economists observed this situation and drew the conclusion that population growth has always been a good thing and, therefore, always will be a good thing.

But, once an optimum population density is breached, their interests diverge. It is in the best interest of the common good to stabilize the population, avoiding an erosion of our quality of life through high unemployment and poverty. However, it is still in the interest of macroeconomists and corporations to promote population growth because, even though per capita consumption goes into decline, total consumption still increases. We now find ourselves in the position of having corporations and economists influencing public policy in a direction that is not in the best interest of the common good.

When economists come to realize that macroeconomic growth is no longer beneficial for individual "micro" economies, then things may begin to change for the better more quickly.

Very interesting post. Keep up the good work!

Pete Murphy
Author, Five Short Blasts

[Russ]

George,
To begin with, I should apologize for a careless use of terms. When I referred to the scientist's view of his "inventing", I meant his general endeavors. I am in fact acutely aware (except for this lapse) of the difference between what I'd call a "creative" scientist as opposed to a "technician", while an "inventor" is a tinkerer who may or may not also be a thinker.
We have the same distinction among genuine philosophers, as opposed to technicians of philosophy (most phil professors).

Incidentally, the synthetic endeavor you described, if I came across it anywhere else, would likely make me think of philosophy, not science. Maybe we have more of a terminological divergence and not as much of a substantive one.

However, I'm still not sure I follow this. Certainly a scientific perspective has far more respect for the evidence, no matter where it leads, than most ideologies.
(Let alone the "libertarian" pack of lies. Proposal: I'm no etymologist, so I don't know the "correct" derivation, but contra the libertarians' claim that the term refers to "liberty", I say all decent people should insist it means "libertine.")
However, I don't understand what the (strictly) "scientific" values are which this evidence leads to (besides, if you decided a priori that science was worth pursuing, that decision was made without scientific evidence), nor what are the scientifically rigorous presciptions compelled by the scientific values and evidence.

Although I reject the nonsense "Science without religion is blind" (even if this were true, I'd rather be blind than endlessly hallucinating), if it was changed to say science needs the guidance of philosophy, well that's precisely what I believe.
But then again, when I said you were being "ideological", this is what I meant anyway - that your "scientism" (do you consider that an ugly term? I know the religious yahoos use it as a term of opprobrium) is actually a philosophical stance outside of science.

That's what Nietzsche would've meant too. BTW, I don't mean to inject N into every discussion, it's just that this particular issue is one he dealt with so intensively and, I believe, definitively, I felt compelled.
One more thing - I fail to see the relevance of how long ago N wrote. (Not long at all, I believe. Indeed the world is only just starting to catch up with him. I consider him to still be the most modern thinker.) Time elapsed doesn't change the character of timeless truths.

[Dave Gardner]

I agree with the need for a major paradigm shift, but I don't think it's about energy. A big part of our problem is we've come to equate work with amassing wealth, rather than meeting basic needs. We know that once basic needs are met, additional wealth isn't a big driver of happiness. Yet we cling to the mythology, caught up in an endless quest for more wealth, which - while plundering our planet - doesn't make us happier.

Dave Gardner
Producer/Director
Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity
www.growthbusters.com

[George Mobus]

Russ said:
'However, I don't understand what the (strictly) "scientific" values are which this evidence leads to (besides, if you decided a priori that science was worth pursuing, that decision was made without scientific evidence), nor what are the scientifically rigorous presciptions compelled by the scientific values and evidence.'

By way of a little background. Your comments started me thinking (as intended, I suspect!) about my own perspective on science as a process. I think I would have to describe science as meta-social process that emerged from the human inclination to wonder why. In other words, science is an emergent phenomenon, dependent on human thought processes and human interactions, particularly external symbolic representations, but above the fray of human foibles. Just as molecules emerge from a mix of atoms and go on to interact in a new regime, or life emerged from the peculiarities of protein, carbohydrate, lipid, and nucleic acid chemistry, I think of science as an emergent property of humanity.

I don't know if this helps you understand my claims any better, but it helps me! I have always intuited that there is something unique and special about science as an overall process and its products that transcends human life and this exercise has helped me frame that special ness in a way that is consistent with my overall general systems thinking. When I was younger I pondered the notion of the over-mind, the notion that humans are the cells in a grander, global entity whose thoughts were somehow the aggregate of the thoughts of humans. This was my version of god but without the human personality or propensity to interfere with the affairs of individuals. I was influenced by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in thinking about a noosphere in this regard.

Now as an older mind I revisit that earlier musing but now in the form of thinking about what form such a noosphere might take. And it occurs to me that that is exactly what science is!

I hope you will forgive me this bit of romantic nostalgia about a boy's naive philosophical musings.

As to pursuing science, a decision you say is made a priori without scientific evidence, this is fundamentally true but in the sense that Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem or Turing's Halting Problem proof show that no system can be both complete and consistent. I cannot bring scientific evidence to bear in the sense that no one can imagine how to do an experiment (strict interpretation). Nor have I accumulated, formally, enough observations of science at work with statistical analysis of the behavior of the process to warrant claiming evidence for trusting in science (I believe Popper and Kuhn gave a go at a less formal approach). I'm not sure how one could do so. So I would conjecture that this position is equivalent to Turing's situation. But it would take a much brighter bulb than is screwed into my neck to provide a proof.

Still I think the anecdotal evidence, gathered over a number of generations now, is strong. Science is progressive in the same sense that evolution is progressive (I know this infuriates biological evolutionists, but they still need to explain why evolution has always produced more complexity and organization than less - such complexity being an existence proof of the claim for progressiveness). Once you view science from above and over a long time scale, the underlying messiness of the sociology of science and the psychology of scientists notwithstanding, the pattern that emerges in my mind is one of the accumulation of justified true beliefs. They are not always accurate, complete or precise (though quantum mechanics seems to excel at the latter). But the meet the basic criteria of knowledge, and they are encoded external to any one or even many minds.

I hope this sheds some light on my thoughts. I hope I can count on you to help me know otherwise!

As for 'scientism': I get this frequently from colleagues (in the social sciences) and not in a good way! But I have no problem with the term in its original philosophical meaning. As you will have garnered from the above soliloquy I think 'scientistically'.

Sorry if I sounded derogatory about Nietzsche. I hold him in very high regard. My point was more to the fact that the history of science up to his day, pre-20th century, was nothing like its history to today. This was with respect to the anecdotal evidence I mentioned above. I agree with you on matters of rational thought by Nietzsche. My contention was that the evidentiary base from which he started was skewed by the fact that science was just getting its second wind and had yet to produce the sustained evidence of process. Incidentally, my thoughts about Human 2.0 were somewhat influenced by his notion of the superman (read many years ago).

"Time elapsed doesn't change the character of timeless truths."

Could not agree more. Discovery of the truer nature of those truths, however, is an ongoing quest, yes?

George

[George Mobus]

Dave,

Thanks for reading and commenting.

I think that what I am proposing is exactly the kind of change that will allow people to more clearly see what you are driving at. If they knew more exactly what their lives depended on, and paid the full equivalence for their basic needs, they would soon realize that what they had been thinking of as wealth (that Hummer for instance) wasn't at all.

The bottom line is this. Everything in our world exists and continues because of the flow of energy. There is simply nothing that humans, or the rest of nature, do that doesn't involve the consumption of energy. Understanding this simple fact will put people in closer touch with what real value is, in my view. Then they will be in a position to make wiser choices in what they spend their personal energy on.

I am planing a series of blogs in the future to work out some of the consequences for individuals in living in a world where energy flow is explicit (i.e. money = energy). I hope you will tune in from time to time to catch those.

Regards

George

[George Mobus]

Pete,

Sorry I didn't get to this earlier.

On your first point I understand your thought here. As a matter of fact, I think my #1, human nature, is at the root of all of the others in the sense of ultimate cause. My mapping in the post was a more proximal cause thing. I am working on a new post (soon) wherein I lay out the causal relations between these four items and many more subsequent problems. At times I imagine these four as a kind of three-legged stool, with human nature being the seat and the other three being legs. There are cross members between the legs (for steadying a stool) that represent the interactions between all three. But in my causal map it should be more explicit as to the more complete picture of what is the root cause and the feedback loops that will ultimately mediate.

As to your second point, I would argue that you have just made the case for a biological basis! As an undergraduate at UW Seattle, many many years ago, I got interested in the nature of psychological stress due to population density. I had been inspired, in part, by Toffler's "Future Shock" and Paul Ehrlich's "Population Bomb". Several years latter, someone, whose name escapes me, did some work on population density in rats showing increased aberrant behavior as the population increased in a fixed-sized enclosure.

My main argument is that this is very much biology and the way we are wired. I don't think the flaws of economic theory has caused this explosion and subsequent problems. I think nature took its course and as long as new sources of energy were growing, why not? Economists have certainly aggravated the situation by failing to take natural law into consideration - the natural (logistic) growth curve you mention. I don't blame the Walrases of the world for their conceptualization. I do blame modern-day economists who, in spite of all the evidence that has accumulated in the last few decades, continue to maintain that growth of the economy is what we should be striving for. As John Feeney puts it, "Growth is Madness"!

George

[microsrfr]

It is my contention that our failings are primarily due to the lack of properly defined and accepted metrics. For example, in the field of healthcare, we currently key off of the cost of family health insurance. But utilizing this false metric solves nothing and actually compounds our problems.

I have proposed three metrics for healthcare which I believe are necessary and sufficient:

1. Efficiency of healthcare delivery system
2. Quality lifespan
3. Quality career span

Addressing all three of these metrics will bring our health care system economics back into balance. I could give several examples of how this is effective, but let me limit myself to two:

Point One: Currently in the US employees are forced out of the workforce starting at age 50 to 55 because of employer considerations of their drag on group health insurance costs. Once they become under- or un- employed, they no longer pay as much into the system while their health deteriorates prematurely and they draw on the system earlier.

Point Two: It is irrational to expect private corporations to invest in preventive health care when the payoff is 10, 20 or 30 years in the future. Yet, preventive healthcare is the most cost effective investment that can be made in ensuring quality lifespan.

Both of these examples are resolved by a proper national health care plan, but we will never pull ourselves out unless we measure success correctly.

If the proper metrics are determined in time, then science and ingenuity will bring us back in balance.

[Russ]

George,
I think I see what you mean. I'll just distill my point: If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying science provides a more and more empirically correct description of the world and allows greater and greater correctitude of physical prediction. (I assume that's what you meant by "progressive", and not any sort of moral connotation.) I don't think anyone except some bizarro academics disputes this, and I wasn't trying to either.
Here's a crystallization of the point I was making, and then I'll drop it for now (since I also want to say something about population):
While science gets better and better at telling us the What, it can seldom by itself tell us the What is to be Done?, and NEVER the Why? And when it tries to, the result is bound to be bad.

A few preliminary thoughts on population:
Overpopulation is certainly the main driver of all environmental (and I would say all or almost all social and economic) problems. The fact that man refuses to take responsibility for his biological proliferation is, I believe, the #1 piece of evidence that man is NOT "intelligent" or "rational" on the whole, but only has the simulacra of these. (In an earlier comment here I referred to "yahoos who are good with tools".)
While the 3rd world can hardly be blamed, we see how even in modern America people simply refuse to take any responsibility for themselves even where they KNOW (that is, they should know, and have no excuse for remaining ignorant) how sociopathic having more than one or two children now is.
It's just another form of greed, of hedonism and self-indulgence, and should be seen as such. (A week or two ago the NYT had a book review on the insane materialism of the self-indulgent parenting "lifestyle" which captured this perfectly. It quoted an obstetrician on having a litter as a status symbol: "Three is the new Hummer.")

I'm glad to see some others who are interested in the -psychological- aspect of overcrowding. I've long believed this is the main driver of much of the stress and violence and even some of the politics of this society (though the political manifestations mask the cause). I'm always contemptuous of the mainstream media for how it pretends this issue doesn't exist. (Just like how, in the debate over immigration, it's clear both sides as well as the MSM have all tacitly agreed to maintain silence on how immigration degrades the environment. It's clear that there's an unspoken schizoid dogma that immigration and the environment exist in separate universes and never touch one another.)

One last point. Although I haven't done a study (and I doubt anyone else has), I'd be willing to bet that, among the "boosters" and "growth" types who insist that population levels and growth either aren't a problem or are even a good thing, you would not find a single one who lives crammed into a sardine can HIMSELF. I bet every last one of them was either born well-off and always able to BUY SPACE, or at any rate worked assiduously to get the money to do so, to personally get away from the swarm he ideologically lauds.
I'm not willing to listen to a word from any of them who doesn't PERSONALLY live in an anthill.
They are all perfect, despicable examples of NIMBYs, a NIMBY being of course the worst form of hypocrite and therefore the worst person on earth.

[Fernando Magyar]

(social Darwinism as a basis for Nazi atrocities comes to mind) bad things happen.

While you make some interesting points, some of which I can find myself agreeing with, that particular statement is about as wrong as you can get.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=ben-steins-expelled-review-john-rennie

[George Mobus]

Fernando,

I read the article and fail to see your point. Did you think I meant Darwinism (or evolution theory applied to biology), period? I did say 'social' Darwinism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_darwinism ). Perhaps I should have been more careful to capitalize 'social'. If you go to the section in the Wikipedia article, Criticisms and controversies, you will see a brief discussion regarding some of the philosophical basis for Hitler's thinking and its relation to evolution theory stolen from biology.

I think if you go back and read some of my earlier posts you will see that I am a scientific evolutionist and not prone to mix political ideologies with science.

Incidentally, I find the Stein movie ludicrous.

[George Mobus]

Russ,

You said: "While science gets better and better at telling us the What, it can seldom by itself tell us the What is to be Done?, and NEVER the Why? And when it tries to, the result is bound to be bad."

This might call for a post in and of itself! In particular I'd love to explore the philosophical meanings of WHAT, HOW, WHY, etc. and compare those with the pragmatic conceptualization of the same words.

Send me an e-mail (on the About page) if you have some ideas about how to tackle this area.

George

[George Mobus]

Russ,

Regarding your comment about how humans are not intelligent, had you seen this posting (and several subsequent to it)?
http://questioneverything.typepad.com/question_everything/2008/01/if-were-so-smar.html

I spent a good deal of my life wondering why, if we are such smart creatures, is the world the way it is? I finally started realizing it isn't intelligence per se, but wisdom that is the missing element.

George

[Fernando Magyar]

George,
My apologies I was indeed a bit too quick on the draw and my comment was more of a shoot from the hip and think about it later sort of remark.
Cheers,
Fernando