« Honoria's through with nice! | Main | Doing the math for NASA » Screw sustainability?The supposedly brilliant Howard Bloom makes up a definition of sustainability ("...merely hanging in there, merely surviving, merely sustaining. It implies a penny-pinching earth, a miserly existence, a nature that punishes change, and a nature that prefers small tribes to large groups of human beings.") The he explains at length why we should "screw it." Commenter brettski rightly calls Bloom on his sustainability fantasy, posting an accurate definition: ""Sustainability is a characteristic of a process or state that can be maintained at a certain level indefinitely. The term, in its environmental usage, refers to the potential longevity of vital human ecological support systems, such as the planet's climatic system, systems of agriculture, industry, forestry, and fisheries, and human communities in general and the various systems on which they depend." [Link] jon posted this at 10:23 PM |
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Imagine Zen Enlightenment. Is this a perfect state of cessation? Everything in balance? No. It is a complete acceptance of the chaotic changing evolutionary drive and creative urge of the kosmos in an endless bursting forth of new creativity. Humanity is Nature's product and we are an explosion of nature. Trying to maintain a state now is like trying to control the expanding gasses in a vessel, somehow freezing them in place, preventing them from expanding and jostling and exerting pressure in every direction. We have never been satisfied with balance. We have never ever been content with having enough. Not when we invented fire, not when we invented antibiotics, not when we invented the television. We always want more and the next generation and their children will want more. This is merely the evolutionary drive that has pushed everything forward since the creation of the universe. Human lifespan has doubled and tripled, and we may even advance medical science to live 200, 400, 600 years. Where will we live? We will have to develop new technologies and new forms of culture and expand beyond this world. We either go forward or we stagnate and die. This is how nature treats every species.
Posted by: Stefan | August 24, 2008 5:35 PM