We know what to do about drift to low performance. Don´t weigh the bad news more heavily than the good. And keep standards absolute.
Systems thinking can only tell us to do that. It can´t do it. We´re back to the gap between understanding and implementation. Systems thinking by itself cannot bridge that gap, but it can lead us to the edge of what analysis can do and then point beyond – to what can and must be done by the human spirit.
Donella Meadows in Thinking in Systems, 2008
It surprises me that people still sheepishly ask us, “But won’t this (health aid) lead to overpopulation?” Women will naturally have fewer children if they know their kids have a greater chance of survival. Knowing that is really key.
Melinda Gates in The Tools to Save Lives, Newsweek, Nov 9, 2009
Gates is a roman catholic mother of three
I will go with the activist, but we really cannot tell who will turn out right.
Can homo sapiens – self-styled – have the wisdom to learn to manage fertility
for the common good? It is a unique experiment. We have examples of
other species being too successful in isolated situations such as islands,
impoverishing the environment and eventually diminishing in numbers
through starvation. We have similar examples in the human experience, but
we have no such experience for the species as a whole, spanning oceans
and historically warring cultures. I cannot imagine social regulation – except
in an Orwellian state – becoming so perfect that the human race actually
reaches an optimum level and stays there, but a future of population
fluctuations around a moving optimum level would be much better than we
now have.
The point of this paper is that that level is indeed moving – downward.
Human activity is already degrading the environment and its resources.
There are now too many of us to live decently on the impoverished resource
base toward which we are moving. It is not enough to hope that “something
will turn up.” That view betrays a vitalistic view of history. Nothing is likely to
turn up by itself.
I have read and browsed a long series of books on current and future human conditions. Most authors are concerned about the future of man, most are expressing a certain optimism, some are reluctant to express a clear opinion and advice.
This situation has prompted some poetic lines of questioning:
Whom should I trust?
Would you trust a pope
who doesn’t understand
the message of Malthus?
Would you trust a politician
who doesn’t grasp
The Tragedy of the Commons?
Would you trust an economist
who believes
in perpetual economic growth?
Would you trust a newspaper editor
without knowledge
of The Population Bomb?
Would you trust a prime minister
who doesn’t understand
Liebig’s Law of the Minimum?
Would you trust a professor
without a working knowledge
of exponential population growth?
Would you trust a philosopher
who does not understand
the consequences of ”Peak Oil”?
Would you trust a President
who believes in
superstitious forces?
Would you trust a NGO leader
who thinks
sharing will solve world problems?
Would you trust a CEO
who denies
the finiteness of Earth’s vital resources?
Would you trust a powerful pundit
who did not recognize
the development of social entropy
Would you trust a UN Secretary General
who fails to understand
The Human Predicament?
Would you trust a Nobel Prize laureate
who will save the world
with fluorescent lamps?
Would you trust a god
who made borderless multiplying
an order?
Tell me whom I should trust,
Show me a person
who is not missing a point
crucial to the survival of Man.
Reiel
In this wider perspective it is clearly far too soon to judge whether modern industrialized societies, with their very high rates of energy and resource consumption and high pollution levels, and the rapidly rising human population in the rest of the world are ecologically sustainable. Past human actions have left contemporary societies with an almost insuperably difficult set of problems to solve
Clive Pointing in A Green History of The World, 1991
We can have a country of smart voters. I hope we make the changes needed to have this kind of country. It would be a nice place in which to love.
Rick Shenkman in JUST HOW STUPID ARE WE?, 2008
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24. If the countries of the Third World do not succeed in controlling their population, than the countries having a population control need to create for it selves large autonomous peace zones. Only in such zones will it be possible to carry out environmentally sustainable methods of production and to pay the working population a reasonable wage. And free trade will only be possible between economic regions of corresponding standards.
25. We have to learn planning in longer terms and correspondingly to create a survival ethos spanning generations. For this purpose we have to avoid the trap of short-sightedness, “the trap of competition.”
Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt in Wider die Mistrauensgesellschaft (“Against The Distrust Society”), 1995
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson - I picked up this book in mass-market paperback at the end of June, the day we left Atlantic City. I'd seen it in hardback at work while working in Acquisitions and been intrigued by it; I didn't expect it to suck me in like a giant black hole and expel me into some alternate universe, forever changed by having read it. It's a thriller, it's social commentary, it's a vast northern forest of impronounceable Swedish names, and I could not put it down. Lisbeth Salander is an unforgettable heroine.
Misery by Stephen King (R) - I have a perverse fondness for this book about a writer's antagonism with his "Number one fan" (who's also a baby-killing psycho). The movie was disapointing, despite the talents of Kathy Bates.
Lucifer v. 8: The Wolf beneath the Tree by Mike Carey et al. - I have the last three volumes of this series in my possession but haven't felt like reading them. Overall I like it very much.
The Evening Sun, poems by David Lehman (R) - David Lehman set out to write a poem a day and produce a sort of personal journal in poems. I think I like his first collection of daily poems, The Daily Mirror, better than this, the second, but they are both good.
Magic University I: The Siren and the Sword by Cecilia Tan - I don't think I mentioned this at all when I read it; I almost forgot to list it because I read it as an ebook, at my computer, rather than in the hand. I think the author (who's on LJ) will excuse me for summarizing this book as "An American, college-age Harry Potter, with sex by the author instead of the fans". *g* Kyle Wadsworth thinks he's going to Harvard to talk about a scholarship, but instead he winds up a student of Veritas, the secret magical university that shares a campus with the prestigious mundane college. Tan provides an engaging mix of characters, pleasing erotic writing, and magical workings closely based in historic Western occultism. I'm looking forward to what I predict will be at least three more books; the first book's motif is air, so we have fire, water, and earth to cover.
Columbine by David Cullen - I found this book interesting yet oddly disappointing. Cullen's thesis is that everything we thought we knew about the shootings at Columbine High School in 1999 is simply wrong. Harris and Klebold weren't tormented aesthetes who suddenly cracked and began shooting up the jocks who bullied them; they were a cunning sociopath and his suicidal sidekick who planned not merely to shoot a few of their schoolmates, but to blow up much of the school and then pick off the bomb survivors as they fled the building. It was only Harris's incompetence at constructing the bombs he was so proud of that prevented thousands of people from dying. While police created a perimeter and collected around it, watching for signs of movement within the school building, Harris and Klebold shot a few people, got bored, and shot themselves. A teacher bled to death while paramedics hovered outside the perimeter. A girl who supposedly died a Christian martyr, defending her faith, was in fact shot before she could even scream; another student entirely was shot after declaring her faith in God. Cullen's research is extensive, including tapes and diaries from the two killers that were only released years after the incident, yet in the end, I found myself not deeply disturbed or deeply caring. The mystery of psychopathy touched this community through the high school at its heart, yet afterward people grieved and life went on.
A Tibetan Buddhist Companion, ed. by Erik Pema Kunsang: A wonderful compilation of Tibetan Buddhist texts that I'm going to read over and over.
In the Land of Invented Languages by Arika Okrent: This recently published title turned out to be a lot of fun. The author began with an engaging account of getting interested in the Klingon-speaking Trek fan community and studying to gain first-level certification in the language. From there she goes on to eighteenth-century attempts to create a rational universal language that would mirror the structure of reality (as perceived by European philosophers of the day), international languages as a means to world peace (including the most successful of the lot, Esperanto), and constructed languages as art form (Tolkien's languages, Klingon, and other by-products of speculative fiction). It's been years since I read any current popular books on linguistics; I read Mario Pei's books over and over as a child, but they were written in the forties and fifties. Okrent is clear, funny, engaging, and ultimately sympathetic to Klingon speakers and all those for whom language is not merely a tool but an art form.
Teachings of the Earth by John Daido Loori: Dogen and other classic Zen masters on the wisdom of the earth and the wisdom of preserving the environment. I'll keep re-reading this one until I understand it.
Introduction to Tantra: The Transformation of Desire by Lama Thubten Yeshe, ed. by Johnathan Landaw: This is a wonderful clear and simple book on a profound and difficult topic. Say "Tantra" and most Westerners will think of languorous sacred sex play, but in Buddhism Tantra is one of many names for the accelerated methods of reaching enlightenment that include mantras, visualizing self as a deity, devotion to one's guru, and ultimately, under some conditions, engaging in sexual meditations with a partner. Lama Yeshe, one of the first Tibetans to teach Western students, comes across in this book and in people's reminiscences of him as a warm, funny, accessible, deeply compassionate and wise person. For grasping the basic principles of the accelerated method to buddhahood, I don't know a better place to start than this book.
Wizard's Holiday by Diane Duane: An enjoyable re-read. I'm delighted that she now has a publication date for the next book in the series; A Wizard of Mars is due in early 2010.
Maskerade by Terry Pratchett: This was my first Pratchett, and I enjoyed it a lot. It made a wonderful follow-up to watching the musical Phantom film and the classic black-and-white. Strangely enough, though, I did not actually run off and start reading all his other work. I think I'll get back to him eventually.
Mi vidas kion vi faras tie = I see what you do there.
38. The Crooked Inheritance, poems by Marge Piercy (R)
41. Long Quiet Highway by Natalie Goldberg (R)
42. Cave of Tigers: The Living Zen Practice of Dharma Combat by John Daido Loori
45. A Beginner's Guide to Tibetan Buddhism: Notes from a Practitioner's Journey by Bruce Newman
46. The Poetry of Zen ed. & trans. by Sam Hamill and J.P. Seaton
47. Bringing the Sacred to Life: The Daily Practice of Zen Ritual by John Daido Loori (R)
48. 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive inside the Twin Towers by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn
(The numbers refer to my count for the year--I've finished one book so far this month, so I'm up to forty-nine books read this year.)
Zen, poetry, and disasters seem to be the themes of this month. I finished Cave of Tigers after many months of reading it in small increments; it reflects the Zen practice of Dharma combat, in which the teacher proposes a theme, students one by one express their experience of it, and the teacher responds with a reality check. It's kind of like reading transcripts of live-action koans--which, I guess, is what koans originally were.
Hamill and Seaton's collection of Zen poetry was good, especially for the great haiku masters, but it was awfully short on female poets, and I still like Ryokan best.
I get into a mood sometimes where I want to read about how people react under stress: hence, the Donner Party, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, and the 9/11 book. There are disturbing parallels between the 1911 Triangle fire and the situation in the World Trade Center towers in 2001; fire safety codes ignored, firefighters inadequately prepared for the situation, desperate people jumping to escape overwhelming flames at their backs. Then I spent two nights on the sixty-second floor of a hotel, whee!
My first book for this month was Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and OMG I have succumbed. I tore through 700 pages in about two days, barely putting it down, and now WANT MOAR PLZ. Larsson's debut novel deserves to be an international bestseller in multiple languages; it has a host of engaging characters, a richly twisted plot, and a strong thread of theme running through. I feel I can hardly wait for the second novel to be released at the end of this month. He apparently had about ten books in various stages of planning, from the three that were completed to rough notesfor the later ones, and if he had lived to write them all, I think I'd read them.
