rise and fall of civilizations

Interesting article. Not very surprising, but a little disconcerting for those of us living in the "new world". 
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-us-dollar-and-bretton-woods-are-finished-the-bricssco-summits-in-ufa-marks-the-start-of-a-silk-world-order/5461828  

In case you missed it, (wouldn't be surprising since it barely gets any news coverage even here at home), our prime minister has been traveling the world signing a lot of free trade deals with seemingly random countries. I'm curious what the impact will be in the emerging world economic context... is he rearranging deck chairs on the titanic, inoculating us for the inevitable, or selling us out to our new masters?

Time is relative

In admiration (and some jealousy) of long-term state planning:
"In 500 years you will see [that] history is on our side."
– December 10, 2010
– Tan Changliu (Chinese communist official)

Money and power

I've always known that money is power. What I've only just realized (in discussions with my parents) is that money only gives you power to the extent that you can choose who it its worth spending on. If you don't spend it, you don't have power.

posted from Bloggeroid

Addendum: This gives the "debt ceiling impasse" in the USA an interesting angle.

public policy making approaches and desirability

realized I was judging unfairly a local politician who is acting very reclusively, shutting out community associations from discussions that affect their residents, and is already acting as if campaigning for next election (which are "only" about 3.8 years away), and felt rather disgusted with this behaviour. Then I thought of another local politician who has exactly similar style, yet I admire this person for their determination and ability to make (and push) "right" decisions. Why the difference I wondered.
I then considered the opposing approaches to making public policy, quite obvious when observing federal politics.
1. decentralized power: consult extensively and enact according to the whim of the people, engaging the public but at the risk of inconsistencies in the mishmash of policies of various eras;
2. centralized power: enact strategically and coherently across all areas, which can be quicker and cheaper and potentially more effective in the long run, but at the risk of polarizing along ideological lines and public discourse and thereby eroding democratic ability.

Which approach is generally more desirable? Desirability could depend on "success". Success depends on traction, which depends on how aggressively the party with approach #2 promotes its position (yes, =propaganda) and attempts to destroy the credibility of legitimate opponents; approach #1 depends on how relevant the measure really is over time, which in turn depends on how educated those involved in the consultations were.
But to me, it's really a question of principle and whether I feel my needs have been met and ideas respected. Which is why I still do not trust the local politician whose behaviour prompted me to have this reflection.

commodity oddity

The planet is not able to sustain human life everywhere. Some areas have lots of oil, some lots of water, some lots of gold, some lots of people, some lots of big empty spaces. Commoditization (as much as it rubs me the wrong way) is a way of facilitating the exchange between trading partners who have too much of one thing and not enough of the other, and both (should) come out ahead. If you can't live locally off the land and you can't generate enough of what other people want to trade for what you need, perhaps you simply shouldn't be living there. Unfortunately, that philosophy isn't compatible with the UN philosophies of human rights and anti-poverty campaigns that required when you enforce borders and citizenship. Without commoditization and trade, there is an imbalance, and the resulting feeling of resentment creates political and thus economic stability and we're all worse off. In the end, that means that for the developed world to maintain its lifestyle, it is in our best interest to provide basic needs like water where it is needed, as a form of protection money for us to keep living the way we do. Question is, though, how sustainable can that be?

between a rock and a hard place

I posit that Science (as a movement and eventual public policy) was borne (in part) of the inability of religious orders and their unsubstantiated posturing to satisfy the natural curiosity and insatiable thirst for knowledge of the people.

However, I sense "the people" are starting to feel the same skepticism and frustration as our ancestors once did, only toward "science" - after so many abusive ad campaigns such as those stating that "4 out of 5 doctors smoke camels", that "BPA is harmless", that pharmaceutical X is good, global warming, etc., who can really blame them (us) for not being satisfied with the answers we're being given.

This is making it increasingly hard for government scientists to convey the importance of certain problems and the benefits of the recommended measures (yes, measures, not "solutions").

Recent press releases from US EPA contain statements like "final" assessments, "science has proven" etc - are a (desperate) attempt to reassure the public - but any such reassurance will be short-lived and they'll be worse off the next time a paper is published that indicates something slightly different, which is what research is supposed to do. The core principle of science is that it does not 'prove" anything - it merely reports on what we can observe and measure now with tools and test methods currently available. Any attempts to convince the public that the science is clear/final/conclusive/etc will inevitably backfire.

Sure makes my job interesting - and I don't even work in communications. Meanwhile, the anti-global warming groups and anti-pharmaceutical groups are having a field day, dancing circles around frustrated well-meaning scientists whose rep has been, I fear, irreparably damaged.

The scientific era is coming to a close, after causing much excitement and advancing our quality of life to the point I can sit very comfortably in my air conditioned two-story house in front of a PC, leisurely typing this away on the internet for nobody in particular to read. Meanwhile, while power generating stations blithely devour fossil fuels that were safely tucked beneath the earth's surface for millions of years, and I know nothing more about my neighbors whose help I may need in the event of an inevitable catastrophe or societal collapse. Religious orders of old are probably shaking their heads, having tried to warn us against eating the forbidden fruit. (sigh) Oh well. I wonder who's winning at Farmville tonight.

western ideological sustainability

difficulties in Afghanistan etc where we (the western world) are trying to implement "democracy" is exposing some of its dirty secrets... Given:

1. Came across an article that concluded that the human brain was not wired for reading. The brain is naturally wired for moving, speaking, relating, and strategizing, but we have to re-wire our brains to communicate through writing.

2. Structured civilization (high degree of civility) is, Darwinianally speaking, the pinnacle of evolution that depends on education and hard work (and resources to exploit).

3. Higher education is to society what fertilizer is to grass: to keep it strong, you have to keep investing in it to prevent the weeds from sprawling.

4. American (and likely Canadian too) politics are won largely by convincing the biggest number of rich people that you can win over the biggest number of "ordinary" people. (interpretation of political fundraising and advertising campaigns)

1+2+3+4 = Human beings are social animals. Democracy is not our natural state, and requires great investment to maintain it. As the western world starts running out of environmental resources and poor (but still naive) people to exploit, where will investments to sustain our way of living come from? More importantly, will we have the resources (and knowledge) to protect against the weeds growing from within?

In case of nuclear attack

Funny, when I was visiting the Diefenbunker they said they were instructed to eliminate the dying to extend available resources. I wonder if that was part of the official "government continuity plan?"

New World Order

or, another step closer to Orwell's 1984.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/marketsNewsUS/idUKL295567120090402

Is orthodoxy carbon-neutral?

Officially, according to guardian.co.uk's terms of use, I can't reproduce the article here (even for non-commercial ops). Oh hell, here it is anyway, you never know how long it'll be available for at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/feb/25/religion-christianity, and rationalization of religious customs (like burning vs stoning people and sacred cows) always makes for great discussion:

It is good to know that two bishops are undertaking a "Carbon fast" which will require them to turn off their computers every night, rather than leaving them on standby.

Unfortunately, I am not very good at piety and it made me wonder, in a rather irreverent way, about the the environmental consequences of burning heretics. Is orthodoxy carbon-neutral? It turns out to be quite difficult to calculate this. Cremation is less green than burying people, but this is partly a result of the attempts that crematoria now make to avoid pollution, which requires burning the bodies at very high temperatures.

But an auto-da-fe does not need to be nearly as hot as a modern crematorium. The purpose of the fire is not to reduce the heretic to ashes, but to impress the onlookers with the horror of the crime. But even at these lower temperatures it seems at least as environmentally sinful as a barbecue and we know we are meant to be giving those up, too.

Perhaps the greenest religion ever developed was that of the Aztecs, who kiled their victims with stone knives. In fact their entire way of life has been analysed from an ecological point of view by the late anthropologist Marvin Harris, who concluded that human sacrifice was an ecological necessity for an urban civilisation in central Mexico. So far as I know, they did not sacrifice heretics, only enemy prisoners, but you can see how heresy was discouraged by the practice all the same.

It is a commonplace of anti-Aztec propaganda that the hearts of the sacrificial victims were offered to the gods, after being cut, still beating, from their bodies. This was a waste, and would of course have required fuel for the sacrificial pyres. But Harris was the first man to ask what happened to the rest of the prisoners; and he concluded that their bodies were also cooked, and then eaten. Central America had very few native domesticable sources of animal protein – only birds and dogs, in fact. So the meat from these vast temple sacrifices would have made a noticeable difference to the soldiers lucky enough to be fed. By the same token it would have increased their zeal in battle very considerably. To be taken prisoner really was a fate worse than most other deaths. You can see how the system could become self-perpetuating.

Harris is rather out of fashion now: he analysed all sorts of religious taboos as disguised ecological rules: the sacredness of cow, he thought, was an expression of the fact that the farmer who eats his bullock in a famine year might as well be dead, since when the rains come he will be unable to plough.

Similarly, the taboo on pork in Judaism and Islam makes sense in the Middle East, where the pig is a bad ecological bargain.

Obviously, if you are a true believer, this kind of explanation will be unsatisfactory. It's also unsatisfactory if you are the kind of rationalist who wants all religions and all superstitions to be equally ridiculous and unscientific. And it offends, finally, people like me who dislike the idea that religious practice can be explained away or reduced to anything else.

None the less, the link between religion and ecology is worth thinking about. One of the things that all religions have are prohibitions which have to be obeyed "just because". Heresy is shunned not because it is rationally wrong, but because it is heretical. But these attitudes aren't confined to religion. Nor could they be, because they are indispensable for any large scale social organisation. If everyone stops to question everything, nothing gets done. What religions do, to some extent, is to internalise social disciplines so that they come to seem morally binding and quite impossible to analyse coldly. We're going to need that kind of social discipline to cope with the shrinking resources of the world.

Actually fiddling around to discover the precise carbon footprint of everything we do is absurdly time consuming and in any case unlikely to come up with the right answer. In this sense, environmentalism is indeed a religion, though one without any defined supernaturalist dogmas. Trust in authority, whether Pope Benedict or George Monbiot, is the only way we can hope to link the greater rationality of wanting to preserve humanity with the rationality of the small scale decisions we make all the time about how to live. Of course it is absurd. But so are all the alternatives; and they are worse.

from http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/feb/25/religion-christianity

short-term politics fail to address underlying issues

'Western' democracies usually allow a few years of actual governance between pre-election orgies. That kind of directional stability is usually pretty good provided it doesn't drift too far off-ideological center. However, when it comes to generational trends, 4-year terms doesn't even come close to even giving them the time to grapple, let alone understand or even communicate, the magnitude and complexity of the problem.

But here's a key primer from http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1176152765213
:

PLAINLY, A key to reducing violence is to reduce birthrates. According to Heinsohn, this could be achieved through widespread knowledge of birth control measures and the will to use them. Such an option, however, is unlikely because of religious opposition among traditional Muslims.

Since they can't tackle religion, they can, and do (especially in the current budget) focus on jobs. Giving people opportunities to work forces them to think (hopefully at least a little) more carefully about their own future. A little employment uncertainty (take too much time off and you might be fired) probably "helps" in that regard.

But this is still terribly short-sighted. Jobs in the service industry (Home Depot, Tim Hortons etc) may keep people busy, but they aren't as rewarding as, say, having a loving family. And the construction industry is only going to last as long as the city centres and old suburbs are bedlocked with aging baby-boomers who don't want to turn their 4-bedroom homes over to new families.

Expect the perfect storm in 10 years or so: the boomers will be buried, after straining our healthcare system to the breaking point, there will be a ton of real-estate available (housing market collapse), service industry will follow (no boomers sipping coffee all day every day at Tims anymore), and the public service will be left with a massive gap of experience, and industry as a whole will be staffed with people who were raised in perpetual economic growth and will resent no longer having what they've come to believe as entitlements rather than a reward for a strong work ethic. Economy as a whole will implode, people will stay at home with nothing to do but have kids, and you're set for another generation of extreme violence.

This is why I think the current budget, or even 4-yr politicking, doesn't even come close to trying to balance the underlying pressures that contribute to social stability or collapse. It's purely reactionary and terribly short-sighted.

I'm still hoping for a politician with a vision for the future, that can carve a proper role in the world to give Canadians from shore to shore to shore a sense of pride, common long-term purpose, and opportunity to share peace and prosperity. Perhaps that should be added to the Constitution, so the Senate can fulfill that as part of their mandate to defend, protect and promote it.

demographics - not fully digested yet

I haven't figured out what makes people want to have kids/not have kids. Might not make sense. Likely oversimplified. Probably not politically acceptable. Certainly not complete.

I think it has something to do with a combination oflifestyle:
--For you "haves" who have none or few kids: is it because it is inconvenient when both work and you want to give each other (and your one/few kid(s) if you have any) the best because that's what you've had/known and you want them to be able to experience it too one day?
--For you "have nots" (who seem to have more kids than the "haves" think they can afford to care for but you seem to manage anyway): Is it because hardship is all you've ever known and you see nothing wrong with raising your kids that way too?

and Social pressure and optimism/faith:
--I suspect majority of peoplesocial groups with no or few kids are ok with that because it makes it easier to control the variables in their favor of their legacy/lineage; they have bought into the "establishment"; they are (over)confident everything is fine and don't see any cause for it to change now (or ever);
--I suspect majority of peoplesocial groups with many kids are doing so partly in the hope of future generations outnumbering and taking down the dwindling but ever-ascending "elites".

Either way, I suspect our "western" ways are leading us to reproductive insufficiency. Comment/email me if you have any thoughts to share.

fast food - tasty, but...

some things you`d rather not know, but you're glad you do.

Another illustration of science (chemistry and research) raising
concerns of the 'fast food' industry i.e. tracing the source of this
industry's food supply and what is really in your combo/trio selections
from McDonald's, Wendy's and Burger King ...

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20081114/forbes_fast
_food_081115/20081115/

power

an effective illusion - if somebody seems to have power, we naturally tend to respect (not necessarily honour) it.
is it our survival instinct, out of greed (share of likely spoils), or just mental laziness (accepting what others seem to have already decided)? something else? likely a combination of several.


background: knighthood (the facebook game) made me reflect on this. since i no longer play, i thought i'd offer the stores of various weapons and gold my minions have produced on autopilot to the player that i thought was the most worthy. he came back with appreciation and a promise to distribute them to lower-ranked players to help them along.

i recognized his power by (a) his power score but mostly (b) the number of people actively playing with him (he is the founder of a successful league or alliance or something). he was acting as an escrow or something in a trade i was conducting, and that's when he earned my trust (what little was needed for me to want to offer him my redundant riches).

this isn't democracy - this is benevolent monarchy, but in a fantasy world that you can take your chances in and not lose anything if things go wrong. yet the social interaction, honour and recognition between players is something that the current political "democratic" system fails to offer - or at least seems to fail to offer and by extension isn't in a position to offer it. and so our governments are relegated to the back burner of social conscience, to a role of dealing with the things that have to be done but without significant meaning to the average person, and subject to control by parties that seek opportunities for financial gain (if not for them, then for the people that supported them). a competition of kingdoms, so to speak, where the winner is decided not on the battlefield but in elections. the fact that elections are now scheduled regularly just makes them more mechanistic and dull. one ray of hope survives, that the canadian people have insisted once more to maintain their involvement and hold on to the strings of power by denying yet again a majority government.

from tribalism to religionism to nationalism to... ?

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=2f608f0e-0cd2-451c-bf24-1c40aae3b7b1

First a simplified context. Our survival once depended on living in tribes led by a strong leader. Gradually the groups became larger as the smarter (or desperate or beaten) leaders aligned themselves with stronger leaders. Low-level conflict was inevitable. Eventually groups aligned themselves along religious lines, leading to larger more brutal conflicts culminating in WWII. We still can't all agree on which god/being(s) is/are supreme - but at least for the last 60 years or so that argument has been more or less irrelevant and the world's borders have been relatively stable (thanks in part to the UN's slowness (aside: I wonder if it wasn't designed that way to allow emotions to simmer)). This assurance of stability permitted investment in infrastructure and private enterprise, improving our standard of living significantly. We may not have the same religion, but there is consensus and respect of each other's national borders, which is why I still believe the state - you and I and everybody else - must maintain a meaningful presence in society, actively investing in the threads stitching our social fabric together.

What comes next though? Advances in transportation facilitated massive migration around the world, where people gathered naturally (sometimes more, sometimes less) in specific areas of every city. Nationalism, democracy, hard work and a common conviction in human rights eventually broke down the barriers separating them and respectful integration began. More recently, however, human rights excesses, cultural districts reaching critical mass and more particularly advances in communication almost eliminate entirely the need (and sometimes the will) to integrate themselves with their host nations and national borders lose their relevance.

if not a centralized government system, who will we (people in general) sign a social contract with next, to decide what is best for us, ensure social justice, defence of our interests and ways of life? Since "we" are increasingly divided along cultural and religious lines, is there still hope to reconcile and (re)integrate the more extremist groups, and if so, what who gets to decide what means are justifiable? Or are we past the tipping point?

I believe people come to this country because of perceived ideals and opportunites for a better way of life. If they are disillusioned upon arrival, is that is not our fault? and is it not the natural tendency for them to gravitate toward areas where their old culture has already been reestablished, which may be less than ideal, but at least is familiar to them? (Mis-)application of current policies only accelerate this phenomenon and our disrespect for them anyway further compounds the problems. So, shouldn't we start looking at approaches to realize an environment where ideals and opportunities for self-actualization and interdependency really exist? Such a Canada was once valued as important and achievable and that perception still exists abroad. I personally still believe in it, but if we collectively "know better" now that that ideal is wrong or that it is just not achievable, do we not have a responsibility to ourselves and the rest of the world to admit it, agree on something better, and move on?

Stonehenge mystery solved?

gotta wonder if Stonehenge wasn't just another case of a clever druid guy showing off or a frustrated druid wanna-be trying to prove something!

For hundreds, maybe thousands of years, people have been trying to
figure out how primitive people could build huge structures such as
Stonehenge and the pyramids out of stone blocks weighing thousands
of pounds. Scientists have been stumped.

Then along comes a normal guy - a retired construction worker - and
he says well, I would do it like this. And he does. This guy uses
the simplest tools known to man and shows how simple and easy it
would have been to create Stonehenge .

This is a really great video clip. Amazing how this guy could figure
out something that has confounded scholars for centuries. And not
only figures it out, but demonstrates it!

This guy could build a replica of Stonehenge single-handedly, while
a committee of 20 or 30 Civil Engineering professors from leading
universities would be debating how it might be done.

http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/posts/moving_big_rocks

Bush could weaken Endangered Species Act

Parts of the Endangered Species Act may soon be extinct:

# Bush wants federal agencies to decide for themselves if projects harm wildlife
# Changes would "seriously weaken" habitat protections, says conservationist
# New rules end reviews that developers say increase many project cost
# Similar bill passed in the House in 2005 but died in the Senate

Another step backward to a bleak future.
Apparently Conservatives/Republicans are the only species on earth in a symbiotic relationship still trying to kill its host...
I'm glad somebody (Dion) has the balls to try to rebalance the economy to take environmental sustainability into account. I wish him luck.

Al Gore

Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet

civilizational exhaustion

indeed...
http://www.nationalpost.com/most_popular/story.html?id=563845

Headrush

The World is Upside Down, NYT Op-Ed
A shift in economic power is under way to which the developed world has not yet adjusted. Of course the G-8 and the permanent membership of the U.N. Security Council need to be expanded to reflect this change. The 21st century can’t be handled with 20th-century institutions.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. Glad to see that Harper has been emphasizing less on trying to implement failed American policies of 20 years ago. Have I just stopped paying attention to him, or could it actually be he's finally coming around?