[FRIAM] Homo Hiveus or Bio Slime?
Prof David West
profwest at fastmail.fm
Wed Jun 3 16:33:12 EDT 2020
Interesting / recommended:
Movie — Mortal Engines. "We have to destroy London" London traveling around the globe destroying all other mobile cities.
Book — SEVENEVES by Neal Stephenson. Black hole destroys moon, three arcologies (one a space station, one undersea, and one in Alaskan mine, survive but ethnic strife among the seven "races" (each the descendants of one of the Eves) survives as well.
davew
On Wed, Jun 3, 2020, at 1:21 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
> Gary -
> I do think your characterization if taken literally has a tinge of the sociopath in it... but I have similar instincts and offer this complementary? perspective:
> I used to worry (a lot more) about what I called *Homo Hiveus*, an evolution (via social not genetic mechanisms) of our tribal species to a eusocial one. It sounded like a purely miserable way of life, etc., yadda yadda. I was a budding pseudo-liberatarian.
> I credit Glen somewhat for harping against hyper-individuality (on and offlist) with me enough to get my attention, if not to completely straighten me out. I am not tuned or calibrated for crowds personally and I therefore ignore/avoid them... however that does not mean I don't believe that we either A) CAN become a better version of ourselves by giving over to a more collective way of being; or B) WILL move toward the biofilm Glen suggests whether that represents a "better" version of ourselves (by what measure?).
> My instincts/embedded values weigh in: 1) I don't want to give up/lose my personal identity (ego) and/or agency to a collective; and 2) I don't want to see my species over-run the planet (any more than we have, and surely less) and exclude (most) other life-forms in the process.
> I became interested in the futurist Paolo Soleri's Arcologies (Architected Ecologies) when he was building his first (and only) example in central AZ while I was in college in Northern AZ (1970s). Through having done some laser scans of the Paolo Soleri Amphitheater I became more intimate with his staff at Arcosanti and have visited a few times. One articulation of his vision for "Arcologies" is to build (I'm getting the numbers wrong I think but you can appreciate teh spirit) 1 square mile Arcologies, each holding 1M people and providing for all of their own needs (food and energy) in self-contained ways.... and that by "contracting" the world population into roughly 1000 of these (at the time) that it would "save the world"... this included NOT plowing up 1000 square miles around each arcology for intensive agriculture... and did imply a vegetarian/vegan diet (though maybe with aquaponics if not soylent-green).
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology#:~:text=Arcology%2C%20a%20portmanteau%20of%20%22architecture,ecologically%20low%2Dimpact%20human%20habitats.
>
> I also made a shift in consciousness maybe 25 years ago when I realized that we *don't all have to take the same route*. While I'm not a big fan of Musk's ideas of appropriating/colonizing Mars, I do think it is at least as inevitable and viable as the Norse colonizing Greenland and Vinland (even if they ultimately withdrew). So some sea-bottom arcologies, some rainforest-canopy arcologies, some desert, some polar, each with it's own character would suit me better. And surely Mars/Moon/Kuiper-belt too? Complexity theory would suggest a power-law distribution of scales too?
> I hope we *don't* go to bio-slime and if we need several thousand Arcologies to "contain" the bulk of the human (over) population then I'm game... I won't be around for it and probably my children/grandchildren (who have chosen big cities: Portland/Denver) will be more adaptive to such. We could *also* reduce our population to something more sustainable. I'd like to hope (romantically) that there would still be room for some comfortably dispersed human populations living a sustainable/permaculture lifestyle as well... but the purists would need thousands of identical arcologies (hives) I am sure.
> - Steve
>
> On 6/3/20 12:44 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote:
>> Does it make me a sociopath for me to hope big cities *do* collapse and become a thing of the past? People who know me well understand when I say I like persons, but not people, which is to say that while I treasure individual friendships and relationships, I at best tolerate crowds. I think we have not evolved the psychological mechanisms to live together in great concentrations. Our advanced civilization is much too young to qualify as having stood the test of time, a few measly tens of thousands of years is such a small blip in time compared to the time life has existed on our planet. I personally believe that the Earth would be much better off with under a billion (highly educated) people, with AI and robotics providing for the bulk of our material needs, and that is something we should as a species strive for. But then, I could be absolutely, completely, wrong about all this, and instead just be a sociopath. I hope not.
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 3, 2020 at 11:48 AM Merle Lefkoff <merlelefkoff at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Biofilm, huh? I think you may be on to something.
>>>
>>> Returning a long-overdue book to the downtown Santa Fe library last evening, I took a walk thorough the plaza to see how our "phase two" was coming along. There were about 40 police strolling about--with only a few pedestrians, locals all wearing masks, and a few unfortunate tourists (not wearing masks, evidently not needed in the biofilm). There had been a rumor of a demonstration which had not materialized. So the officers were enjoying the evening "break", as they told me.
>>>
>>> I can't sleep at night worrying about how we're going to keep peace in the valley in the near future as the quickening collapse of our systems becomes logarithmic. Many big-city police are recruited based on former military service. Also, many who get a high from dealing with violence are attracted to policing. The recruits are then trained as warriors, not peacekeepers, today even dressed for duty on the "front lines". Beyond the systemic context of racism, poverty, etc. etc., the elected city mothers and fathers who theoretically "control" local law enforcement either don't give a damn, or they're scared of the very powerful police unions.
>>>
>>> I'm old enough to remember the release of the President's National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorder, known as the Kerner Report, FIFTY-TWO years ago in 1968. After surveying 24 "disorders" in 23 cities, the final conclusion was that "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white--separate and unequal". The report then went on in extraordinary detail to describe the challenges of pervasive racism and the absence of political will to provide the federal money needed to intervene AT THE SYSTEM LEVEL. It was quite remarkable to read again; every word could have been written today; President Johnson immediately dismissed the report, released on February 29; and on April 4 Martin Luther King was shot dead.
>>>
>>> https://hystericalcolorblindness.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/kerner-commission-report-pdf/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jun 3, 2020 at 9:47 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Aside: Do you avoid using the Reply mechanism on purpose? The subject seems to be a normally formatted reply, but there are no References: headers in your posts. This prevents threading clients from treating your post as a reply. It seems like you're using the Gmail web client. But I haven't read email headers in awhile. So who knows?
>>>>
>>>> I entertain a long-running (longer than usual for me) ill-formed hypothesis that as our population density approaches the carrying capacity of the earth, such isolation will be more and more rare. And that diversity will also go down. We'll become more of a biofilm (or superorganism) on the surface of the earth and less of a seething constellation of differentiable agents. One hitch is that as climate change worsens, some places will be the exclusive playgrounds of the wealthy (wealthy enough to own the water and supply chains to move goods to these rarified places). So you optimistic elitists living in compounds like Santa Fe (parasitic off those of us who might still function more naturally as climate change blossoms) will become more and more isolated while the rest of us become more and more like a biofilm.
>>>>
>>>> So you'll need to cling to your diversity while it lasts because WE are coming for you! >8^D
>>>>
>>>> On 6/3/20 7:41 AM, Jon Zingale wrote:
>>>> > I personally find the Santa Fe police force to be very good at being
>>>> > empathetic and encouraging peaceful conflict. As someone who has spent
>>>> > half of my life living in dense urban centers, I often feel a responsibility
>>>> > to witness when I see police interactions with others. Moving to Santa Fe has
>>>> > done a lot to remediate my feelings around the police. Further, while there is
>>>> > a very long way to go wrt race and equity, the discussion has been explicitly
>>>> > in motion here in New Mexico for a long time. Is it possible that our apparent
>>>> > /isolation from the broader unrest/ is a sign of maturity within our social
>>>> > discourse? I have some concern that there may be a rising pressure
>>>> > across the diverse regions of our country to abstract away our differences,
>>>> > and to behave as if the discourse is /everywhere the same/. Doing so in
>>>> > many cases would erase the very good work that has been hard-won.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> ☣ uǝlƃ
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
>>> President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
>>> emergentdiplomacy.org
>>> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
>>> merlelefkoff at gmail.com <mailto:merlelefoff at gmail.com>
>>> mobile: (303) 859-5609
>>> skype: merle.lelfkoff2
>>> twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
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>>
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