[FRIAM] the Big (Bright) Green Lie
Steve Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Sat Apr 24 13:45:35 EDT 2021
Paraphrasing Larry McMurtry's fur-trapping duo as they are leaving their
favorite valley at the end of the season with their pack mules (too
lightly) loaded with Beaver Pelts:
"remember when we used to come here 20 years ago, we could trap 100
beaver a day from this valley, now it seems it takes a whole week to
take that many! I wonder where they all went?"
A friend commented recently that if we had "unlimited" free energy, we
would just make our strip mines 10 times as deep and 100 times as wide.
I like to consider the Dyson Sphere
<http://www.islandone.org/LEOBiblio/SETI1.HTM> as an edge/extreme case
of what we could/might do to optimize the exploitation of the free
energy in our solar system. I particularly like that Dyson conjured it
in a thought experiment of one way to search for extra-terrestial
(extra-solar) civilizations. If Elon Musk has a skunkworks and
nanotech/antimatter project underway it seems conceivable that such a
Dyson Sphere could be constructed in a generation or three. And then
what? What would we exploit then? Wait for Sol to go supernova and
somehow build multiple shells to buffer, absorb, re-emit that energy on
a time-scale more suitable to carbon-based life? Or become postCarbon,
not just postHuman?
On 4/24/21 10:04 AM, cody dooderson wrote:
> "the hover crafts are cool, but the air is so putrid" -Murder Mike
> from Run the Jewels.
>
> As the saying goes "with great power comes great responsibility". I
> don't think anyone could argue that our technologies don't have a dark
> destructive side. I find it hard to think of any technology that
> doesn't cause some harmful side effect when it becomes "commercially
> viable". For instance antibiotics are amazing, until you inadvertantly
> make multi resistant staph. Nuclear power can power all of the cities,
> and also destroy them. Etc...
>
> I mostly agree with technophobics about using just enough of the
> right technology, but no more.
>
> On Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 1:06 AM Pieter Steenekamp
> <pieters at randcontrols.co.za <mailto:pieters at randcontrols.co.za>> wrote:
>
> I understand the concerns of the supporters of Brightgreenlies but
> I don't necessarily agree with their solutions.
>
> Humanity has causes and is still causing huge destruction to other
> life on Mother Earth. It is good to have activists for a Greener
> future. I support seeking a win-win solution for all of us, from
> microbes to all multicellular species, including humans.
>
> On a personal level it's not always easy. For example, I'm morally
> against eating meat. I just consider it wrong to raise animals in
> factories where they don't seem to enjoy any happiness and then to
> kill them to eat them. But when I was young I didn't think about
> it and became a good carnivore. I was raised on a farm where we
> had meat on the table for three meals every day. It's very
> difficult for me now in my old age to be a vegetarian without
> cheating. My friends call me an undercover vegetarian.
>
> For me the solutions are based on seeking ways to achieve both
> emotional and material abundance and restoring natural eco
> systems. The first place in this case is not to compromise. IMO
> there are plenty reasons for optimism that:
> a) With microble gene editing we can feed the world from relative
> very small ponds,
> b) have can have abundant cheap, clean and safe nuclear energy,
> c) use this desalinate water to have abundant fresh water,
> d) develop carbon based materials to make exotic stuff from
> extracting carbon from the atmosphere and
> e) restore the natural eco systems on earth
> and so on and so on. My argument is to embrace technology for
> solutions.
>
> My optimism could prove false, I'm not predicting the future, but
> I really don't think there is a viable option to keep 7 billion
> humans from starvation and saving the environment without turning
> to technology. We have grown to 7 billion in non sustainable and
> harmful to the ecology ways. Turning to non-technological
> sustainable ways will just not support 7 billion people on earth.
> But, I might be wrong, so my view is that provided that it can
> support the current world population, I will be very happy to live
> in a perma-culture based sustainable world. I can see that the
> quality of life could be much higher on average for all than what
> it is now.
>
> If we are doomed we are doomed, but I'd like to be part of the
> movement that actively seeks and supports solutions for a better
> future for all Life on Mother Earth.
>
>
> On Fri, 23 Apr 2021 at 22:14, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com
> <mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
>
> As far as meat eating goes, three solutions come to mind 1)
> make it too expensive, 2) find treatments that reprogram the
> appetite, and 3) come up with substitutes, e.g. impossible
> burger. Catastrophes would help with #1. They will surely
> come. The general issue with hedonism can probably be
> addressed by #2 (e.g. pharmaceuticals).
>
> Gosh, people didn’t like masks, wait until you take their
> potato chips and porn away. It just isn’t going to happen
> that people decide to stop going to work and tend to their
> organic garden instead. I don’t at any level want to be a
> luddite. No, anything else. Let’s shoot for underground
> cities on Mars, reprogram the genes of children to be able to
> endure heat, etc.
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com
> <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>> *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith
> *Sent:* Friday, April 23, 2021 12:53 PM
> *To:* friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] the Big (Bright) Green Lie
>
>
>
> Merle -
>
> Thanks for commenting on the film-maker: A good background on
> Julia and the documentary:
>
>
> https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/adv/article-how-canadian-filmmaker-and-environmentalist-julia-barnes-decided-to/
> <https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/adv/article-how-canadian-filmmaker-and-environmentalist-julia-barnes-decided-to/>
>
> I didn't realize it just premiered on yesterEarthDay.
>
> The point of my anecdote about Jensen is that I don't think
> *he* carries the baggage, but it *does* follow him around!
> Which is always the problem with popular movements, they are,
> well... Popular! in the best and worse sense of the term.
>
> I feel blessed to have found Jensen's works early (by some
> measure), it has helped keep me from falling into the
> TechnoUtopian basin of attraction entirely. The complex
> (precessing figure-eights for the most part) orbits I *do*
> follow in this topic can be very unnerving (one day looking to
> Elon Musk or Bill Gates or the latest advancement in Solid
> State Battery Tech or the Stock Market's euphoria around Green
> Tech, etc. and the next day noticing the unintended (and
> un-tended-to) side effects of the last round of "technical
> fixes to non-technical problems").
>
> - Steve
>
> On 4/23/21 1:38 PM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
>
> Thanks Steve. I'm still processing and appreciate
> knowledgeable and thoughtful feedback. I'm very
> interested in Julia and her efforts (I think she's 25),
> which seems to me to add authenticity to the quest for
> what the hell to do next. And I agree that Derrick has a
> lot of baggage and is a drawback. Julia decided to make
> the movie after she read the book.
>
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 23, 2021 at 1:28 PM Steve Smith
> <sasmyth at swcp.com <mailto:sasmyth at swcp.com>> wrote:
>
> Merle -
>
> I don't know how much traction you will get amongst
> this group of radical technophiles (self sometimes
> included). Unfortunately I think that is one of the
> most effective modes of those promoting the Big
> (Green) Lie (appealing to technophilic/technoutopic
> sentiments for "full speed ahead"). Another is (also
> unfortunately) to recruit the conspiracy nut types to
> (ab)use this line of thinking to fuel their own
> anti-human agendas. In the moment it looks like a
> narrow ridge to walk down. Maybe "the Donald" has done
> us a service with *his* Big Lie, to attune us to our
> susceptibility to "Big Lies"?
>
> I have followed Derrick Jensen from early on (when he
> published Language Older than Words
> <https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/hres109/BILLS-116hres109ih.pdf>)
> and have a strong sympathy for what he is oft accused
> of as "Anarcho-Primitivism". This movie (and the
> book) Bright Green Lies is, in my estimation "not
> wrong" in most if not all of it's positions. But that
> is not enough.
>
> I used to be part of a regular community centered
> around Jensen but I had to drop out, not because of
> Jensen's ideas or actions, but because the radical
> fringe that was drawn there couldn't hold two
> impossible thoughts in their heads/hearts at the same
> time. There was (in my opinion) a strong draw to a
> sort of "revenge aesthetic" among the more radical who
> were indulging in the most extreme form of your own
> (you introduced us to it most of a year ago)
> /Cassandrafreude/. They elevated Jensen to the
> prophet of a Cult of Personality, somewhat against his
> will... I haven't tracked this lately but the
> centroids of these movements implied by the likes of
> Jensen, Paul Hawken, Bill McKibben have entered
> mainstream and may ultimately represent the current
> phase of the evolution of the *first world's*
> post-capitalist/climate-change aesthetic.
>
> So I believe that an important aspect of YOUR work is
> evolving to include not just exposing the Big (Green)
> Lies we tell ourselves, but healing the implicit rifts
> growing within the diverse coalition of
> progressive/humanist/environmentalists/pan-somethingists
> or helping them/us to build a healthy ecosystem of
> somewhat diverse and often competing *strategies* for
> achieving a common *stated* goal.
>
> The most critical aspect of BrightGreenLies' story for
> me is that it is self-contradictory to recruit (or
> rebuild) a hyper-capitalistic profit-centric
> mega-industrial framework to "rescue us" from the
> trajectory that is fundamentally part of their model
> of their mere existence. That is not to say that I
> have a "better plan" really (nor do I endorse many of
> those implied by BrightGreenLies), but I definitely
> accept that if the likes of Elon Musk or (even) Bill
> Gates ends up "rescuing" us from the slow-moving
> disaster (aka "Jackpot
> <https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2020/02/william-gibson-apocalypse-it-s-been-happening-least-100-years>"
> in Bill Gibson's vernacular) we are in, it will only
> be a delay or divergence from the most obvious, most
> imminent of disasters we are bearing down on. I
> believe (but cannot begin to prove) that we are at the
> beginning of a cascade of birfurcations and that
> whatever is on the "other side" of that is going to
> look *radically* different from what we live with now
> (from first to third world, inclusive). I highly
> doubt *all* of the Utopian (and most of the Dystopian)
> visions we tend to dwell on with Gibson's particular
> version being only one zany example juxtaposed maybe
> with that of Miller's "A Canticle for Leibowitz
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz>".
>
> I believe it is critically hard to simultaneously
> optimize one's local/personal/individualistic
> circumstance while also trying to optimize a global
> measure as well. I don't think we are particularly
> well wired for this... but it IS our ability to
> abstract and language and cognize which *might* allow
> us to evolve our *sociopoliticaleconomic* (nod to
> DaveW) selves off of the family of trajectories we
> have set ourselves upon (and double down with
> movements *like* the Big Green LIe). There are folks
> with the intellectual/abstractional/synthetic
> capability here to participate in that IMO, but
> finding the right perspective and a place to obtain
> traction to do so remains an unsolved problem.
>
> For better or worse, I believe movements like
> McKibben's <https://350.org/> and Hawkins'
> <https://www.drawdown.org/> and Gates
> <https://www.gatesfoundation.org/>' and Sanders'/AOC
> <https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/hres109/BILLS-116hres109ih.pdf>
> are perhaps necessary excursions from what to the
> "enlightened" might feel is a "shortest path". I
> want to invoke another thread here with Stephen's
> "Least Action Path" conception, but in this
> arbitrarily high dimensional space of "human endeavor"
> convolved with the "biocryoatmogeospherical" space
> with which we are co-evolving (again nod to DaveW)
> sociopolitcaleconomicspiritually.
>
> I hope your attempt here (and elsewhere) to harness
> "the likes of us" or more importantly to get us to
> "harness ourselves" (there's an image,a corrolary to
> "hoisting oneself on one's own petard"?)
>
> Carry On (while I Rattle On)!
>
> -Steve
>
>
>
> I'd like to start a new stream for those
> interested, but first you have to watch this film:
>
>
>
> https://www.brightgreenlies.com
> <https://www.brightgreenlies.com>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> emergentdiplomacy.org <http://emergentdiplomacy.org>
>
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
>
>
> mobile: (303) 859-5609
> skype: merle.lelfkoff2
>
> twitter: @merle110
>
>
>
>
>
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> --
>
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> emergentdiplomacy.org <http://emergentdiplomacy.org>
>
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
>
>
> mobile: (303) 859-5609
> skype: merle.lelfkoff2
>
> twitter: @merle110
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