Re: Environmental Destruction

J. R. Molloy (jr@shasta.com)
Wed, 12 May 1999 11:33:01 -0700

From: david_musick@juno.com <david_musick@juno.com>

>J. R. Molloy wrote:
>
>"...you can see that Homo sapiens has decided en masse to commit global
>suicide."
>
>Honestly, I don't come to the same conclusion, from the evidence I see.
>I agree that people are being quite devastating to the biosphere and many
>people have strong desires to hurt themselves and their world, but I
>think that most of the damage is being done out of ignorance and
>adherence to tradition. Traditions change as each individual decides
>what to continue and what to discontinue. Ignorance can be dealt with in
>many ways also. My favorite is simply giving others honest feedback on
>the effects of their actions and making sure there is little they can do
>to avoid awareness of the fact that they are destroying much which they
>would probably rather not in the long term.

I should amend my earlier statement. Not only has Homo sapiens begun the process of global suicide (he didn't actually "decide" to do it -- he just doesn't comprehend the consequence of his instinctually-driven ideology), he has also begun the process of collective denial combined with a determination to keep up appearances. Ubiquitious self-medication and drug abuse in the West constitutes one symptom of this collective malady. In the words of an earlier contributor to this list, "Anaesthetic offenses numb the best defenses."

Cheers,

--J. R.
CEE CEE Rider:
Conservative Existential Empiricist
Consilient Extropian Environmentalist
(with a pancritical rationalist predilection)