20120915 (J)
Journal: September 15, 2012
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Idea of Time                Origins (fire in the ocean)                Purpose                Science (Energy)

(edited version of last few days journal entries) Perhaps we need a rest. Perhaps humans need a short-term correction to step off this cancerous growth path we seem to have been on ever since agriculture, its surplus of food, and the need for someone to protect the surplus from scavengers. This surplus rode with the idea of "future", of "time", of a "security hedge" against future shortages. More surplus, more security, and it's off to the infinite improvement races, the rush to make the world of the future a better place than it is today. Perhaps we need a short rest, a time to ask, "Why are we doing this?" After so much improvement we still live no longer than a lifetime, though we tell ourselves we CAN. We still suffer pain, sorrow, and regret as we pursue and find joy, pleasure, and (here perhaps our sin) hope. We have enough to eat, so "Why more?" Have we stopped toil?, disease?, violence? "Oh, but wait", Alice retorts, "we have lessened them and thus saved many, many, many lives." Then, "Pray Alice, where is my father's saved life stored?" Though more young people reach older ages, no one, practically, lives a hundred years, and no one's ever been known to live more than 125. That hasn't changed. "Why more?" Perhaps we need a rest. Perhaps we can use this extraordinary but still nascent tool, the internet, the "collective human mind", to probe and re-probe the inventory of and then discuss the ideas about "Why?"

There are many options, some within our potential range of influence, some not; some mutually exclusive, some not. Perhaps such ideas should include long-term perspectives, 1000's to millions of years. Is infinite exponential growth of human biomass and surplus energy-use sustainable? The current answer in vogue is "NO, and HELL NO!" But why not? Biomass, I might agree, but surplus energy, I wonder. There are, it seems, options on the biomass side. Perhaps we could genetically engineer or even socially encourage smaller people, eventually reaching perhaps the size of ants, perhaps plugged into a "common brain" like whatever the internet evolves into in a few million years or so; or perhaps we might consider reducing our biomass significantly by reducing our numbers instead, to, say, 100 million or so, about how many lived with Socrates, Caesar, Christ, and Buddha. Preserving just today's per capita energy surplus, actually for a lot less, we could safely and reliably provide food, shelter, and clothing to EVERYONE for less than about an hour or two of "work" per day. But what, oh what would we do with all that time except gossip and argue, or perhaps paint and play musical instruments not for profit but for self. Why?

On the energy-use side, ISTMRN we are about to cross a threshold where we can, not necessarily will, leave life behind for our energy -- nuclear and photovoltaics, perhaps even synthetic photosynthesis, With that energy perhaps we could disassemble granite into its 89 elements (including uranium, thorium, and potassium, mainly, for energy), create a few more in our reactors, add in nitrogen, argon, and carbon (in order of abundance) from the atmosphere, and synthesize any substance, compound, food, or other arrangement of atoms we need to achieve whatever pleasures we desire. With fusion, the "promise" of burning the seas for energy looms large even in the short term. But, in this scenario, we will no longer "need" life, other life, or its carbon-based energy production. We can do it all with granite, air, and the ever part of the reluctance about nuclear power is hesitancy to leave life behind, a daunting prospect. But why not? Perhaps we are, as some have said, "matter becoming conscious" and perhaps "life" is just a stepping stone along the way, one we will probably want to keep around for nostalgia's sake, at least for a while. Perhaps as others have said we are God's agent to reverse the entropic decay of the universe. "Why? And perhaps equally appropriate "How" or at least "How now?" (Brown Cow?). The last is to address what our current choices have to do with such options, and why should they have any priority, especially, as many would argue, "Considering TODAY's problems such as Iran's hegemonic desires and their program to build the bomb to implement their destruction of Israel". I am being a wee bit sarcastic here I am afraid. Why?

But perhaps such point of harnessing all the energy of the big bang to consciousness's or its evolutionary successors' whims, is not sustainable. Some say the unsustainable path we are on will soon lead, as with all other "natural" population explosions, to a precipitous decline in the economy and probably in the number of people, with all sorts of attendant conflicts for pieces of the shrinking pie. Perhaps, and I think much current politics is about security measures to guard against such a collapse, so I think the papers are a better source for inventorying those options than here.


But after Armageddon how shall we put it back together? And how can we transmit that recommendation or advise through the catastrophe? Is "growth" in material knowledge and manipulative techniques necessary for "happiness?" Gossip, argument, and art again. So maybe it's time (over the next several hundred years, and perhaps forever) to think seriously about choices we CAN make, and then about whether indeed we want to make them. Adam Smith's "invisible hand" might be the best guide after all, God's guide. By thinking about it and TRYING to guide the future we might just be fucking it up. But I think not. So far so good. We are still here, alive, abundant, emergent, fascinated, and fascinating. So perhaps it is just arrogance that even asks such questions as Why and Why Not. Attempts to influence the invisible hand may presume too much. To do so presumes, probably incorrectly, that we, in our time, know what will be best for them in their time. "Why?"

That arrogance it seems to me applies to the next minute as well as the next century. Que sera, sera, as the Spanish say. But our minds HAVE invented the future, the cat's out of the bag. We have also seen our fantasies about the future become manifest through systematic application of attention, as when we finally own the house of our "dreams", well maybe not exactly, but pretty darn close. So I guess we will ask such question and more; and the invisible hand will compel.



The idea of the future as alluded to above may have received a big boost with the "stumbling across" of agriculture. Perchance a gatherer of seeds gathered enough to fill her hands and perhaps her pouch, then sauntered over to an overhang to get out of the rain, jumping a small creek on the way and dropping some of her seeds, cursing slightly she hurries on to the shelter, there nibbling at the grain she didn't spill, placing it in a little pile for easy pickings. Then she sees a big cat or bear or snake or other human or for some other reason leaves the pile before it is all eaten. Then the next year or so the family is passing through the same area and the same thing happens to her. Under the overhang she sees the pile she left last year and remembers. She looks out and sees abundant seed plants where she spilled the seeds before and remembers. Again, maybe again. Maybe she shares her stories around the fire about finding the pile and the seeds spilled and the abundant seed plants. Then perhaps someone else chimes in with a similar story. Then someone clicks. Future - I can CONTROL the future. If I spill seeds here, next year many seed plants appear and I THINK I caused it by spilling the seeds. So the family then EXPERIMENTS. They purposefully spill seeds and return the next year and find seed plants. They don't know they are "seeds" of course, only that spilling the little chewy things seems to cause more chewy things the next or later. Perhaps the idea of "future", of potentially retrievable storage of surplus, maybe just a day's surplus of collecting, left as our heroine did above, preceded the idea of seeding and CONTROL of the future. The surplus pile is made NOW and retrieved LATER, so the storer doesn't really control the future, he or she just controls the present in a way that makes it last. But the idea of spilling food so food plants "appear" later, I think is a "whole nother" way of thinking. The thought, "My action now in spilling seeds makes more seeds later is an intellectual leap necessary for agriculture to occur, and I suspect, absent for the most part from human consciousness before.

Of course other critters are attracted to the tempting piles of food, squirrels, bugs, bears, other people. So some bright fellow, I am sure it was a fellow and not a girl, offered to protect the pile while everyone gathered seed, because that's when the other critters were wont to "steal" from the piles. Of course he must be able to take from the pile more than he contributed to it, breaking a cardinal rule of family equity, but his "service" "required" it because, of course, he could not be in the fields to collect seeds and protect the pile at the same time. So money was born, as was a king. As the cooperative and its stash grows, more is available in poor growing seasons so fewer children starve, population grows, the stash grows, as do the assaults upon it by the squirrels and, mainly, other people. So the "job" of protection becomes more difficult. Maybe as the pile protector grows old he offers his sons as protectors and teaches them special knowledge about how to protect the pile. Hereditary hierarchies are born, and everything is in place for modern society including derivatives trading, all based on the "idea" that I can hedge the future.