"Saving the Planet" or Survival and What about "Money"?

By Marc Gauvin (c) 27/08/2022

Reproduction expressly granted provided attribution and original link are given.

Isn't abundance having more than you strictly need? Can we speak of an "end of abundance" for the case where we no longer are able to sustain what we never really needed? If we have confused desire with need, technology with knowledge, subtle fallacy with truth and want with power, then isn't the problem one of a lack of truthfulness rather than of some dire circumstance?

Isn't it a question of realising that we really don't know what we are doing, instead of rationalising whatever we do as a sort of adaptation to motivate ourselves into doing "whatever it takes to survive"?

Consider the following:

Humanity didn't create itself, the universe did. So ultimately, we are not responsible for existing. What then is our true nature? Is it to be whatever we prove to be?

No other creature apologises for its nature, but simply pursues their natural impulses wherever those may lead, if it turns out that such brings them to extinction, then so be it,  they certainly won't be the first nor the last. 

The rate of net extinction of species, can only be calculated if we know the total numbers dynamically arising and dying. We are constantly discovering hundreds of new species every year.  In only 2018, 229 new species have been reported to have been discovered [1], that means that at that rate and over the last five centuries 114,500 new species potentially have been added, yet we have only detected the extinction of 900 species in those 5 centuries [2]. Even if that rate is an underestimate that is still only 1.8 species a year. 

No one can calculate the exact abundance of species and how they can adapt to human folly,  we are constantly being surprised in this regard, for example in the highly radio-active Chernobyl forest ecosystem,  species are flourishing [3].  Also,  nature never ceases to surprise us with its ability to build life into the most unsuspected environments, producing life-forms that tolerate all sorts of "impossible" conditions e.g. volcanic snails [4].

So maybe the problem isn't "saving the planet" maybe it is preventing our own extinction i.e. what all creatures do with what nature gives them, and all ultimately fail sooner or later i.e. become extinct as "99% of all species that have existed are now extinct." [2]

But what is our nature? Is our nature to walk around with gadgets providing feedback from our environment, while suppressing our innate biological impulse processing? Is our nature  to be subjugated to harebrained dogma and group think? Is it to be governed by an unstable money system of our own creation but that we never factor into our calculations, even though it is the single major influence on our behaviour,  is that system here to ensure we become what we are "meant to be" i.e. gadget addicted geeks?

Is our penchant to "understand" our environment beyond immediate direct biological responses really our "nature"? The vast majority of mankind are not number wise and find themselves stifled by science and so called "progress" rather than feeling enabled, they are enslaved by progress more than they are freed. And the notion that "progress" and technology provides for mankind's success is simply a self-serving argument because it cannot factor in how we would otherwise have evolved. How do we really know that we are better off than how we might have otherwise evolved? Was our exodus from the paleolithic into the neolithic a fortuitous step towards a more meaningful "survival". Or was it a lethal step into collective enslavement and stupidity,  sealing our premature extinction as "the transition to agriculture had an overall negative impact on human oral health, increased the incidence of infectious disease and nutritional deficiencies, and contributed to an overall reduction in human stature."? [5]

What we do know for sure, is that what we are currently doing is not sustainable and our survival is threatened more by what we are doing as opposed to by what we aren't doing. The question is what of what we are doing needs to go?  Or should we continue trying to control the Universe (i.e. just do more) to compensate for our erred behaviour?  Shouldn't we instead be focused on why we are doing what we are doing? 

Currently a tiny percentage of humans are dictating that our nature and behaviour is wrong and if we do not deny our impulses by building and doing more to restrain the effect of our behaviour, we are doomed to extinction.  But what if the solution is modifying the behaviour of just one or our own systems not imposed by nature? To understand which system(s) must go,  we would need to apply our "systems science" to all relevant systems i.e. is it the SI system of units that is causing our erratic behaviour or is it some other system, like perhaps our money system?

One thing we will find is always missing in all these dictates and so called "science", is a thorough scientific analysis of "money" as a system.  Why? Is it because our otherwise "sages" are so subdued by that system [6] that they fear discovering its affect on them? Is it that they might find that their relationship with the world through money satisfies their immediate impulses in a way that they do not want to change?

Wouldn't omitting such a thorough analysis invalidate their dictates? Isn't it a massive failure of negligence on their part to model "reality" and just happen not to include the money system and its systemic (system wide) effects i.e. effects that override any human behaviour under its yoke?

Ask these so called "experts", if according to their analyses, the money system is "passive" in the formal systems science sense of the term. If it is active (stable or unstable) ask what are its systemic effects on society when its imperatives are assumed by rote and by most all [7]? 

If they refuse to answer, then you know that they are not being sufficiently thorough commensurate with their mandate and just like most of the rest of humanity, they are simply vying to satisfy their immediate impulses. Then all this business of "saving the planet" turns out to be just a ploy for some to ensure exclusive privilege and consideration over others. 

Notice, that if funding were not skewed,  UN officials weren't earning tax free six figure salaries plus travel and living expenses, there would be no UN let alone any IPCC.   Moreover, if the money system were Passive, there would be none of the many systemic issues that depend on the current money system to exist and that are in one way or other,  seen as threatening life itself.  I leave figuring out how many of such issues depend on money to come about to the reader as an exercise.

[1]https://earthsky.org/earth/new-species-2018/

[2]https://ourworldindata.org/extinctions#how-many-species-have-gone-extinct

[3]https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/how-chernobyl-has-become-unexpected-haven-wildlife

[4]https://earthandhuman.org/know-about-volcano-snails/

[5]https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?httpsredir=1&article=1186&context=nebanthro

[6]https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

[7]https://mrcenter.info/Doc/ConferencePapers/2020/MRC%202020%20A%20systems%20approach%20to%20money_4122020%20rev2_17.01.2021.pdf



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