How You Look at Problems Determines How You Solve (or don’t) Them

My wife and I have had diametrically opposed views of how the world works for most of our 50+ years together. She is a fairly spiritual person. I’m not only not spiritual, but I dislike all forms of magical belief. For a lot of years, she was a traditional Christian followed by the Pagan/Gaia thing followed by something all her own now. I’ve been atheist my whole life, at least since I was a kid. For her, it is a motivational issue, I think. For me, it is a practical thing.

For example, we were talking about the global warming issue this morning. We somehow got into the whole “we’re killing the planet” conversation, which I do not believe is likely. Sure, if we managed to fiddle around with black holes and create one that gets out of hand (Can a black hole be “in hand?”) we might figure out how to destroy the planet. But if all we manage to do is raise the planet’s average temperature a few degrees the planet will survive just fine. Or we fire off all all 89,012 trillion tons from our 14,175 nuclear weapons, 92% of which belong to the USA and Russia, we might vaporize the atmosphere. The planet will still have a molten core and the ability to attract ice asteroids and other resources to rebuild its atmosphere. The planet will survive until something damages the core or, in about 5 billion years, the sun burns through its current supply of fuel and that calls it quits for our solar system. I think the key point in the global warming discussion should be not that we’re trying to “save the planet,” but that we’re trying to save our species. Now, I’m not a big fan of humans and absolutely believe that at least 90% of everything humans do is shit, but if humans want a target to shoot for it’s our own survival not the planet’s survival.

If you look at this cutaway of the planet’s construction, it’s pretty obvious how little effect our fucking around will have on the life of the planet itself. We can certainly screw up that thin layer we live in, but the planet is totally unaware of our existence; let alone the universe.

My wife believes the planet is a living thing with some, or a lot, of sentience and intent. I don’t. I think the planet is just what we see it being: a rock filled with molten rock and minerals that lucked into a few ice asteroid hits providing the planet with water and an atmosphere; which has been burned off a few times by other asteroid hits and volcanic activity in the last few billion years. Likewise, my wife still clings to the idea that humans have something like an everlasting soul. I don’t. I think we’re just one of millions of life forms on this planet and in the universe that live and die and are as inconsequential as every other life form here or there. We’re as self-destructive as army ants and about as mindful of our environment and our place in it as that most destructive insect. No soul, barely sentient.

We’re both aware that our opinions on life and the universe are just that; opinions. Neither one of us is committed to the “rightness” of those opinions. So, the argument comes in whether one opinion is more useful than the other.

My kick against spiritualism comes from practical application. I think we’d be better served if we treat the planet like our life support system; like a spaceship that needs maintenance and careful resource management. If we get careless with either maintenance or resource management, we all die. If we let things go long enough, we won’t have the resources to recover and we’ll all die as a result.

The problem with spiritualism is that humans naturally take the easy, magical way out. While English political theorist Algernon Sidney wrote the words, "God helps those who help themselves", there is nothing like that in the dogma of any religion I know of. In fact, the reverse psychology appears to be more common and that allows people to pray to their deity to "fix" their messes instead of doing the work themselves. That is true to the point that when firefighters put out a forest fire, house fire, or whatever else is burning, religious people will regularly "thank God" for doing the work that they saw done right in front of their faces by other human beings. I don't know how stupid people can get, but that is damn close to impossibly stupid.

So, our argument is about which philosophy is most likely to cause humans to behave in a way that might extend our species’ lifespan and, ideally, the other species that share this planet with us. I don’t think any form of spiritualism will ever be helpful. My wife and, most likely, you will disagree, but I don’t think it will matter because we’re not a smart enough species to care either way.

#93 WHAT THE HELL GOOD IS PUTTIN' ALL THE JUNK IN SPACE? (2004)

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day

[This is a fantasy short-story I wrote some time ago, during the end of the Reagan years.  I decided to dump it into the Rat Rants because I didn't know what else to do with it.]

The Russians and the Americans decide, in a fit of teamwork, to "utilize the resources of our two great nations" and split the cost of a manned space station and giant radio telescope.  The Star Wars program is scrapped as part of the deal.  Since the government never gives up funds it has managed to tax out of the public, the funds are spent on the space station.  The space station gets finished and the two nations have more tax money to spend.  They spend it on a space manufacturing facility.  The two nations' research and development industries have been working a lot on space and a little on consumer/industrial products.  They are working smarter and at an elevated technical base after closing their mil-industrial facilities and moving the really valuable engineers to more productive tasks.

The Russians and the Americans are once again the world leaders in technology.  They move all polluting manufacturing tasks off-planet.

The Japanese want part of the economic pie.  The Americans and Russians are wealthy enough to buy great toys and the Japanese want to build great toys.  The Japanese are not afraid of the Russians and not controlled by American regulations.  The Japanese begin SALT XIII negotiations with the Chinese and Koreans.  With Japan in the lead (barely), the Eastern block begins work on a space bridge, with facilities in the center of the span for zero gravity manufacturing.  The bridge is complete in 6 years.  The bridge is profitable in 10.  The Eastern block makes great toys for the Americans and Russians. 

The American consumer market is very wealthy and can afford to share the wealth.  The Russian consumer market is about as profitable as the American market was during the 1960's.  Many developing countries test the new Russian market for consumer products.  The Russians and Americans have perfected space habitats and are considering terraforming experiments on a twin planet in Alpha Centauri.

The West Germans and East Germans get united because the Russians have their eyes on the sky and don't pay attention to terrestrial boarder shifts.  The Germans collaborate with the Swiss to "keep technology in the hands of artisans who are concerned with workmanship."  They make tremendous gains in superconductor and particle force theory and develop a superconductor-based generator that powers a drive that harnesses the anti-mass characteristics of the atom.  They are commercially competing with the Eastern block for the 50 year East/West reunion. 

The Eastern block has made ownership of space habitats a cost-effective, consumer product.  Thousands of families move into the asteroid belt to work and live in the non-national manufacturing facilities. 

The "Keep Terra Clean" movement restores natural balance to the earth's environment and life forms.  Thousands of acres of rain forest are re-planted.  The atmosphere of the earth becomes controlled and the ozone is re-designed to be 100.000000001% efficient.  The oxygen generated by the system is sold to the space colonies.   The rare gases, metals, minerals, and chemical combinations are sparingly parceled out to the colonies.  This trade finances a cottage industry based, high-technology, back to nature life-style economy throughout the earth.

The Americans and Russians are somewhere out there.

You want to know why all the space junk is floating around the planet?  That's why we did it!

Who Cares about Idiocracy?

For a large part of my life, I've carried around a few books and one notebook full of short stories clipped from a variety of magazines. One of those short stories is "Marching Morons" by C.M. Kornbluth. The movie Idiocracy was ripped from the pages of "Marching Morons" and dumbed-down into something a pack of marching Hollywood morons could comprehend. Still, the basic premise--the dumb keep breeding like rabbits while the best minds of our species take a pass on reproduction--held together for the first 1/4 of Idiocracy. The conclusion of the movie was that the incredibly stupid would figure out how to feed themselves. The conclusion of "Marching Morons" was that the microscopic percentage of remaining intellects would find a way to jettison the stupid. Either scenario is depressing and unrealistic.

This morning, it struck me that the problem is a non-starter; unless you are under the delusion that humanity is somehow precious to the universe. Let's take it as a given that humanity will never brighten up enough to stop killing itself. Most likely we face a terrible future, regardless of what a few pitiful humans do to try and avert it. Humans will doing stupid destructive things, keep electing greedy idiots who will aggravate every problem, the incredibly corrupt will keep inventing crazy religions (ie. capitalism, communism, Christianity, Islam, etc.) that distract the foolish and waste valuable resources, and the dumbest will out reproduce the intelligent in exponentially greater numbers.

The sad part of this hurtle to oblivion is that some good people will most likely go down with the overwhelming majority of idiots. The upside, which came to me this morning, is that the number of intelligent humans on the planet will be declining exponentially over the next couple of generations and that minimizes the tragedy. In fact, after watching a few moments of Faux News, I'm sort of looking forward to an end to the species. Between the Teabagger Ladies and corporate scumbags, my tolerance for my own fauna has fallen to a new low.