A Matter of Scope

I feel I owe everyone an apology for my insensitive (if honest) query in my last post. I obviously wasn't as ponderous as I usually expect of me, and instead let my frustration and lack of ability to act influence my writing.

Several commentors made excellent point both on, and off the comment threads. One pointed out quiet insightfully that even thought we live with the mistakes of previous generations, we also tend to make our own mistakes of similar gravity. It's easy when one is frustrated to point fingers at everyone else and scream, "Stop fucking things up for me!" This neglects the mess people often make for themselves. Furthermore, the same commentor points out that the available data at the time didn't properly communicate the implications of problems like larger families or burning fossil fuels. 

Perhaps for the first time in civilized history, humanity is dealing with a complex system on a scale we are only beginning to grasp. Chaos theory, memetic evolution, emergence found in weather patterns, alteration of the climate -- all systems we can only begin to simulate with only the most powerful systems on the planet. Most people have a difficult enough time trying to figure out a personal budget let alone fathom what the beat of a butterfly's wings are capable of producing. Maslow's triangle of needs limiting our scope.

Back when I believed in things such as fate, I often wondered what I could do to help prevent the coming downfall of humanity. I'm not terribly skilled in mathematics, or biology, or chemistry. I tried each, of course, as I'm have a love of knowledge. It was, however, only with computers I felt I had skill or any sort of future. From a practical standpoint, the information technology industry is terribly wasteful. Entire landfills compose of old and broken cell phones. Toxic chemicals are used to produce LCDs and etch silicon substrate. Operating systems and hardware are designed around the concept of a constant, cheap power supply, and are no where nearly optimized for power-savings. How can I help? The simple fact is that I'm having enough trouble getting my life in order to say nothing of reducing my carbon footprint.

I'm no better than all the other 6.5 billion people on the planet.

I tend to view myself as a fixer, a cerebral sort of mechanic with a mind full of learning, culture, and cheesy movies. With that world-view, it's difficult for me to sit idling back when things are obviously broken. It's not just that I want to fix it, it's that I'm compelled to fix it. When I'm unable to fix something, it's terribly frustrating to me. Lately, I've been hearing more and more about how seeming everything is breaking. A prominent biologist claims we're on the cusp of a 6th great extinction event. The oceanic dead zones are expanding. Crops fail and energy prices skyrocket. It's not difficult to look at each as a piece of a larger complex system on the edge of collapse. And I can't fix it. 

Hell, I can't even warn people about it by writing or so much as win a political argument. I'm rubbish at both. If I wasn't struggling to support my own Pyramid of Needs, I'd have more time sit and contemplate and research. Perhaps then I could construct a convincing argument. Or maybe not.

When chatting about this on IM with a friend, she conveyed something telling. "We're in a struggle with stupid people," she typed. A century ago, people thought that nature was infinite and boundless. If we clear-cut the forests, it wouldn't matter as there are more forests. Cue the Amazon Rain Forest. How much of that are we still losing today as others support their Pyramid of Needs? "The problem is, there are more stupid people, and they don't want to listen." The culture of this nation (and increasingly other nations) honor and hail the stupid, and denigrate the intelligent. Anti-intellectualism runs rampant world-wide. After all, no one wants to be thought of stupid, nor does any one want to listen to prognostications of doom.

This incident is tangential to a key personal observation, but it's time for me to continue my Atlas and the Pyramid routine.