Back in the game...

Hi, all,
(If anyone's still visiting this blog...)

I know it's been months since I last posted here. Some you have seen comments on your blogs, so you know I'm still alive; and I've seen a few blogs I used to visit vanish. (Tara? Tonya? Where'd you go? Hope you're still OK.) My day job has pretty much coopted much of my writing inspiration, but I'll try to get back to posting here at least weekly or so...
Anyway, that said, on with the show...

Today, I got a post from a list I'm on that included the following line:

"Reduction to a mere physical survival will reduce our
existence to pure boredom. And what do we do with our souls then? We
have to live and, if necessary, to die for what we believe in."

I basically agree, but think the issue we need to isn't so much personal survival as collective survival. If we as a species don't correct the problems that are now fueling ecological destruction, religious apocalypticism, and the ever-present risk of nuclear war, the whole concept of revolution will be meaningless. Of course, making those changes is itself revolution.

The key as I see it is showing how such changes will increase the well-being of future generations. People need to learn that surviving this year, while important, is less so than ensuring our grandchildren & beyond have a world they can live in, be a part of, and, more crucially, have a role in, rather than separate from & superior to, as our culture not-so-subtly teaches. We need to be able to frame the changes, which will be very culture-shaking and to many people demoralizing, as positive and growth-allowing (not in the overpopulation, economic or material senses, but in the long-term, intellectual, spiritual, health, and other senses).

For that to work, people need to see a wider goal, have an outlet for pent-up frustrations that Taker society breeds. I believe that outlet is space: We need to change our attitude regarding Earth to one of nurturance AND to tap the adventurous elements of human ability.

Some people may say such expansion just exports Taker attitudes, but I disagree -- LIFE itself expands whenever it has the chance, and there are VAST spaces out there with little or no life that may be perfectly suited for colonization without any need to invade and impose a rapacious culture on them. In Earth's history, life has done this without our help, but for Earthlife to survive long-term, our help is necessary, because eventually Earth will become uninhabitable by any lifeform. Homo sapiens will certainly be long gone by then, but whatever species are our intellectual descendents deserve an opportunity to live. Maybe they'll thank us, maybe not.

Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee #, and others, suggest that Earth's overall capacity for harboring life has already peaked and is in its long, slow slide toward death, just as an individual person eventually gets old and dies as body systems shut down. I believe that's one reason intelligence, language, and tool-using capabilities evolved when they did, as the only long-term hope for life to continue, and human adoption of that kind of responsibility would certainly be a far more uplifting philosophy than the object-centered, self-centered, or imaginary-being-centered philosophies/religions/political systems that have dominated human civilization.

Some see a Leaver philosophy as being diametrically opposed to civilization (see, for example, most of the writing here), but I don't. It's just opposed to a certain KIND of civilization, and for change to be successful, people need to see that they aren't losing the benefits of civilization, but gaining benefits of another kind that will make up for some of the challenges the transition period will inevitably bring. The change ahead needs to be a conscious effort to change, to select what we keep and what we discard of Taker society.

We CANNOT let that transition be a "collapse" on a global scale in which most of humanity that survives returns to medieval, neolithic or hunter-gatherer lifestyle; doing so would be a denial of the gift of intelligence evolution has bestowed upon us and our responsibility toward other lifeforms long-term. Given how much of Earth's fossil fuels we've used, it might also make it impossible for a future species to do what we haven't yet done, since fossil fuels are reasonably a crucial stepping stone to space travel. (It might not; Ward and Brownlee suggest Earth has maybe 500 million years in which animal life can continue to flourish. That might enable the fossil fuel supply to replenish itself, but wouldn't our doing it right when there's room for error be better than forcing a future species to do it out of desperation, or, worse, to evolve the intelligence to realize Earth's dying and can do nothing about it?)

BTW: Taker and Leaver are references to Daniel Quinn's Ishmael & related books. In brief, "Taker" refers to a society that believes its way is the only way to live and that humanity has the right (even the duty) to dominate other lifeforms for our own benefit. In other words, our mainstream society. "Leaver" by contrast is an attitude of "live and let live" in which the fact of their existence gives other cultures and species their own value and right to survive independent of whatever usefulness they might have to us. For more info, visit Quinn's main site or one of many forums, such as IshCon.

#-- I'm almost done with this book and will be reviewing it here soon.

ALSO: Having glanced over the old posts, I see a LOT of spam, so I think it's time to enable that word-verification-thingy (of course, they aren't real words, but *shrug*)... Hope it's not too much of a hassle.