[NetBehaviour] Accelerationism

[Alan Sondheim]

The crux, again, is this - you say -

I doubt the
> capabilities of our species are any more than any other in the ability 
> to alter the fundamentals of Life.

- but from everything I've read and researched, this just isn't true.

The disagreement is deep; for one thing I don't feel guilty, but a need to 
act. The argument that 'this too shall pass away' can be applied to 
anything - seriously, why worry about what ISIS is doing, when ISIS won't 
last, any more than we will? Why do anything? I'm not trying to be 
specious here; perhaps I feel an urgency that you don't, or an urgency 
that involves withdrawal and listening as well as acting; too often fast 
actions result in fast disasters...

Again, I may be missing the point (and if I carry decelerationism to the 
limit I'll turn into a rock) -

- Alan


On Sun, 24 Apr 2016, John Hopkins wrote:

> Hi Alan -
>
>> You know well that the diff. between this and the Perm. for example is this 
>> is
>> the result of a particular species running amuck. And with 40-50 % of ocean 
>> life
>> scheduled to disappear, etc. as a result of climate, microspherules, etc., 
>> the
>> situation is a mess. Yes, there will be something afterwords. But we're
>> slaughterers trashing the planet, and for me that's unacceptable.
>
> I hear where you are coming from, and no disrespect, just disagreement about 
> how to act/react.
>
> It's there I disagree -- in the differentiation of us as some special 
> life-form, separate from everything, above, better at trashing, whatever. We 
> are doing what Life always does: helping wind down the universe to its heat 
> death, whatever, by expending available energy to maximize our (Life's!) need 
> to project itself into the future.
>
> In terms of historical geological epoch, I was not talking about an 
> extinction event, but more of the geodynamics of Life at that point in 
> history. Carboniferous coal beds came from a vast anaerobic dead/dying zone 
> that evolved on Pangea's equatorial region -- as a result of a massive 
> fluorishing of Life that came from the easy availability of energies at that 
> time. The life-forms that fluorished in that environment gave their lives 
> into creating higher-level (energy packaging) hydrocarbon bonds that our 
> life-form is now releasing, eventually, back into space as waste heat. We are 
> not special.
>
> Guilt driven by ethereal or unrealized altruism needs to be replaced by 
> active awareness and actions that the species is capable of. I doubt the 
> capabilities of our species are any more than any other in the ability to 
> alter the fundamentals of Life. Consume available energy until it is gone, 
> then pass away. At best, offer ones own body as sustenance for others to gain 
> from, for a time, until they too shall pass... etc.
>
> JH
> -- 
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
> grounded on a granite batholith
> twitter: @neoscenes
> http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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>

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