[lit-ideas] Re: When the world ends
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Lit-Ideas" <Lit-Ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2007 17:00:21 -0800
John
Referring back to the parable, perhaps Esperanza is the Frenchman, you are
the Englishman, and I am the German. My impression (based on next to
nothing) is that Esperanza thinks it frivolous, you want to get into the
details and facts, and I want to speculate about the idea. Can we have
anything to talk about?
Lawrence
"A Frenchman, an Englishman, and a German each undertook a study of the
camel.
"The Frenchman went to the Jardin des Plantes, spent half an hour there,
questioned the guard, threw bread to the camel, poked it with the point of
his umbrella, and, returning home, wrote an article for his paper full of
sharp and witty observations.
"The Englishman, taking his tea basket and a good deal of camping equipment,
went to set up camp in the Orient, returning after a sojourn of two or three
years with a fat volume, full of raw, disorganized, and inconclusive facts
which, nevertheless, had real documentary value.
"As for the German, filled with disdain for the Frenchman's frivolity and
the Englishman's lack of general ideas, he locked himself in his room, and
there he drafted a several-volume work entitled: The Idea of the Camel
Derived from the Concept of the Ego."
La Perlerin, September 1, 1929, p. 13 and quoted in the front of French
Philosophy of the Sixties, An Essay on Antihumanism by Luc Ferry and Alain
Renaut
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Lawrence Helm
Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2007 2:21 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] When the world ends
John, part of your note is a misconception. No harm done that I can see but
correcting misconceptions isn't very interesting; so I put that part down
below, but you also wrote, "But I think the issue Lawrence raises is too
interesting to get side-tracked from: Do some in the environmental movement
go too far in seeing "the environment" as taking absolute precedence over
human concerns like fighting disease, or raising a family?
How many environmentalists would say "The best way to deal with human
degradation of the environment would just be to eliminate humans"? This
would be one extreme. On the other end, would a CEO of an oil company really
be an "environmentalist" if he said "Cleaning up the environment is just
good business; the company that does this the best will come out on top in
the long run."
Where between these is a reasonable "environmentalist" position?
I agree that this is interesting. I recently read an online screed
attacking all the things environmentalists attack - in a very negative
manner, by the way, and I was struck by the similarity of what she wrote to
manifesto of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. I posted the unibomber's
manifesto (http://www.thecourier.com/manifest.htm ) and suggested that
Kaczynski in his manifest presented a more coherent statement of her beliefs
than she had managed. Her response suggested that she thought I was
insulting her so I suspect she didn't read it.
I read the Unabomber Manifesto when it was first published. I was also
reading some anthropology at the time. I recall a book or two by Richard
Leakey in which he discusses the life span of species. As I recall he wrote
that the average duration of a species was about 200,000 years. I forget
what he took to be homo sapiens beginning - perhaps the cave paintings 50 or
60,000 years ago. Genetics suggests the first humans began close to 200,000
years ago, but I don't think Leakey had genetics in mind when he wrote.
Now, Leakey wouldn't agree with me, and I don't think Kaczynski read Leakey,
but our species can be considered to have advanced beyond
survival-of-the-fittest limitations. No other species is likely to
supersede us as a result of being superior or having superior survival
skills. The threats that could most readily wipe us out are comets crashing
into our planet along the lines of the one hypothesized as causing the end
of the dinosaurs; except our species is far more adaptable than the
dinosaurs and that might not do it. There would probably be people in some
corner of the world that could start things up again.
But one of the major flaws in Kaczynski's work was that he thought all would
be well if we returned to a more primitive past. He didn't define it
precisely. I don't think he wanted to go all the way back to being
hunter-gatherers, but he wanted to go back before technology. But it will
be technology that gets us off this planet eventually. Eventually we will
go to Mars and elsewhere in the solar system, and when that happens a
cataclysm on earth won't wipe our species out. Yes, the ideas of Kaczynski
and others would reduce environmental stresses, but they wouldn't address
other threats described to us by geologists and cosmologists.
Lawrence
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