This is a story within a story within the story. If you have already developed your own opinion about human intervention , please read no further. Cancel culture shows the way.
Human life evolved from biomass, the mass that it shares with all other living things. The distinction between inanimate nature and animate nature is already a simplification in terms of perception. Since we can neither think structurally / parallel nor exponentially, our own thinking costs us a lot of energy (in a state of rest our brain uses around 40% of the total energy used for our body) and we are not willing to overwork our body regularly, we work essentially in the unconscious autopilot mode. The lowest possible energetic expenditure for maximum yield was and remains the challenge that nature faces again and again.
The extension of our extremities (ax, bow and arrow) is subject to the same premise. The energy expenditure for the production of the tool, but also for its care and provision (logistics), must overall be less than the energy yield that we achieve by hunting the buffalo in the savannah.
Obviously that worked quite well for over 300,000 years. But as so often, euphoria and the feeling of superiority are in the foreground, especially with those who can bring home a greater success than their competitor when used skillfully.
It is also underestimated that fast running, a good eye, the ability to work in a team, safe orientation and good reflexes lead to success using the arrow tool. Since there have always been people who were better at arrow production than at hunting, this not only favored a division of labor, but also paved the way for marketing. Those who could make better arrows also got more of the meat. The number of arrows became an expression of the social position, the hierarchy of the hunting party (driving or shooting) was always based on the use of the tool. This ranking could only be overlaid by those who had the opportunity to tell the hunter when and where the animal was to be found. In order to maintain his position as clan leader vis-à-vis the young, fast and skillful hunters, it was necessary to put them in their place and sometimes to send them astray, with the sure intention of then ascribing the failure of their hunting luck to the hunter himself. What began with the arrow leads to what we call politics today: divide and rule.
The consequences of this tool arrow could not be foreseen: longer life expectancy of the clan members, lower child mortality, greater need for food, greater space requirement (and the associated higher risk of meeting other humanoids, with a dubious outcome: more deaths, more children), no more existence threatening leisure time (training cultures), much can also be attributed to the arrow.
Even if this list seems positive up to now, other consequences can easily be found: fundamental change in diet (more meat), loss of knowledge (for the utilization of flora), greater dependence on regulatory systems of natural cycles (the higher the food in the food chain is tapped, the less certain is its availability). So there may have been some discussions around the campfire in which the vegan neighbor reminded of the good old days, when you had to move your tents much less often and the peacefulness in the clan was greater, not least because most of the people were busy in spending most of their time with them collecting and preparing plants for dinner. Probably the neighbor already had a difficult time against those who lived from the production of arrows, who wanted to make a career in the hunting society or who had already made it. And politics, too, which, with the intention of maintaining power, did not want to forego the hierarchy as the economic implementation of their will, had found that the rest of the clan could be encouraged to make sacrifices for the good Lord of hunting luck to vote. Even then, everyone agreed: technology is progress, and progress is good. So it was okay that some arrows found their way into the meat of the brother, the neighbor – especially the vegan one. There are a lot more newcomers than before to fill the gaps.
But that’s not all: if you see humans as moving biomass in their habitat, you will have further consequences. The digestion, largely left to bacteria and fungi, first had to adjust to the new offer. New diseases appeared, the immune system was challenged and so was the medicine man in the clan, who then usually took up the plant, if he still knew about its effect. The social burden on the clan due to the wounded and those, who lived longer and longer was a price to be paid.
If you have already developed your own opinion about human intervention , please read no further. Cancel culture shows the way.
The arrow of the past as a tool and manifestation of technology has become today’s computer science. The extension of the hunter’s arm by almost 50 meters was rewarded with meat, known to be a piece of vitality (old slogan in the advertising of the meat industry in Germany: Fleisch ist ein Stück Lebenskraft!). Today the confident handling of the bits and bytes is rewarded. The meat somehow fell by the wayside, but you can still enjoy FIAT currency, since you can still buy highly subsidized meat with it.
It was 55 years ago that Lotfi Zadeh developed the fuzzi logic set theory. It was more than 30 years ago that researchers recognized the connection between population, settlement area and the quality of this area in terms of sustainable settlement. Both sources of these scientific considerations offer many opportunities to understand the effects and interactions in dynamic systems.
The populist of that time narrowed the discussion to the statement: no arrow equals no meat. He described the use of the technology with its collateral damage as no alternative. Anyone who still talked about a purely vegan diet was left behind in the best case, but possibly also a threat to the survival of the clan, maybe also a conspirator in their own ranks, not belonging to their own clan and sent to weaken the clan. The evidence-based statement is obvious: the hunter goes with the arrow and he comes with the meat. The progress denier becomes a useless blackhead. He should not be entitled to the hunted booty.
Attention should be directed to the development of larger and sharper arrows, the conquest of land is unavoidable and thus also the military conflict with neighboring clans, whereby one should first concentrate on those with the smaller arrows.
The trade in agate / jasper (the arrowheads in the Stone Age) is to be promoted in order to produce more arrows and the carrying of arrows is only permitted in locked quivers within the village in order to be able to better guarantee general safety. In order to enforce these measures, selected hunters, who can generally be recognized by their openly carried arrows, are to be released from the hunt (eligible to claim a tribute).
If today the simulation of reality using limited available and arbitrarily selected raw data from the same is called science, and virologists insist on the evidence of the prognoses calculated from it, then the world is on the wire (as R. W. Fassbender showed us), then the prognosis becomes the truth that cannot be questioned, and if they do not match, the fault must be looked for in the real world outside the simulation.
A few years ago a hurricane laid down large parts of the German black forest. Those responsible did everything in their power to research how to reanimate the affected forest areas as quickly as possible. Different strategies (clearing, new plants, use of fertilizer, fast-growing varieties) were put into the race side by side. After all, areas were also shown without human intervention, as a reference and yardstick for the expected success of human intervention.
The result was sobering. After ten years, the forest had recovered most precisely where humans had left it alone.
That was of course not in the interests of the manufacturers of heavy forest machines, not in the interests of the tree nurseries and also not in the interests of politics, which assumes its success in the degree of its intervention and als a minor class of society can only benefit from it by diverting energy and taxing it. Anyone who clears too much damaged wood from the forest and explains that there is a risk of fire will also drive the bark beetle into the fresh wood. The next danger was presented to the populist: the dying of forests: The Waldsterben.
In Central Europe, one person can work on 15,000 square meters in such a way that they can pass this land on to the next generation in the same or better condition. That has something to do with the amount of sunlight, per square meter. In Spain an average of 3.5 people live in this area, in the capital Madrid 79.5. But it is not the case that human progress could change this relationship between human / surface / soil quality. He can only use this technique to extract the energy from one surface in order to supply it to the other, which is heavily populated. The energetic costs of logistics will also be reflected in the negative balance. The arrow from the buffalo is automatically directed at the neighbor in order to distribute the hunting area, and this effort also costs energy that needs to be imported in order to be available on one’s own land.
If you have already developed your own opinion about human intervention , please read no further. Cancel culture shows the way.
Anyone who regards the symphony orchestra as a cultural achievement of a society should not deny the price (redirection of resources to the detriment of the neighbors). There are only symphony orchestras on this planet where there is agricultural overproduction. Where around 5000 children die of hunger and thirst every day, no music plays.
It may help in the short term if the neighbor is far away, the chief speaks of meat deniers and the hunter of grass-eaters. But if the neighbor then wants to get closer to the meat pot, it was good to have invested in longer arrows early on.
Hoimar von Ditfurth once put prospective development worker students in front of a computer simulation in a science program. With a fixed budget, they were able to invest in consulting, wells, tractors and hospital wards. The computer simulated the coming year. And it looked better year after year. More children, less child mortality, more housing, population growth. After 20 years the budget was exhausted and the population was released into its fate. It looked good, better than ever. What the budding development worker students did not knew was, that the simulation would continue to calculate for the next 20 years, now with no extra external budget.
No spare parts for the old agricultural machinery, no money for the infirmary, wells that are drying up, fields that are too salty. After 40 years, fewer people were living in the same area than before the student’s intervention.
There was a hidden role in the simulation, based on sunlight and square meter.
So if students are not supposed to intervene in the fate of nature with their half-knowledge, then scientists, who are concerned with the study of reality should not be used to set the pace for political decisions. When these scientists withdraw from a confusing real world into the simulation of a subset of the same, and thus declare simulated evidence to be the yardstick for politically correct action, then premise becomes fact, assumption becomes truth and evidence becomes belief. Whoever questions this, has to be seen as sneaky.
If you have already developed your own opinion about human intervention , please read no further. Cancel culture shows the way.
Surprisingly, you’re still reading on here! You may wonder what this story is doing on the website of an alternative living community. What do arrows, bark beetles, computer simulations and intestinal bacteria have to do with contemporary lifestyles? It is not an expression of the refusal to progress, it is not the swan song for serious science in Popper’s sense, it is rather the holistic view of the resulting patterns and the structure on which they are based. As a living community, we know about the relationship between area and people. As a living community, we know about the consequences of using tools for optimization. As a group, we know about the resulting structures from the division of labor and specialization. Anyone who walks through the pedestrian zone clapping their hands to drive away pink elephants may count their absence as a service, but we provide no way of counting them against salad (or meat).
We don’t question everything every day. We too are subject to the second principle of thermodynamics. But we allow ourselves and all of our neighbors to question everything. We locate progress in better simulations; the real world remains the benchmark for us. We navigate between assumptions and avoid dogmas. In our relationships, we refer to fellow human beings, not to roles that others assign to them. You can’t really see our permaculture garden. We are still studying. We hold back with the imagination of interfering with nature. We don’t want to create any needs and have suitable products in stock to meet them.
We avoid hierarchies and those that require hierarchies. Some of our visitors miss rules, distrust sustainability without law and order and can still answer the question of who should determine the violation, who checks and evaluates this misconduct and who carries out the resulting punishment. Most people seek security and simple solutions: arrow equals meat.
They pay with freedom and show solidarity with the guards. They go their own way, with no alternative: it just doesn’t work without arrows. And if the old arrows are really no longer useful, they can at best be replaced by new, better ones.
The populist promotes alienation from nature, and what is meant here is the attempt to manipulate the simulation in the minds of his followers. He knows that this increases the distance between the real world and subjective simulation. That is his leeway, enough for pink elephants.
A community that has no room for this populist cannot become popular. A community that hardly distinguishes outside and inside cannot show a strong profile.
This is a story within a story within the story. You wanted it that way and you have read on until now. Therfor now it’s the story in your head, in your own simulation. And this story of yours is embedded in the history of our society which is part of the great history of this universe. Cancel culture equals malfunction – to late. Go ahead, avoid people who clap their hands and want to be rewarded for it.