>From: Chris McMahon <pharmakeus@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 05:21:18 GMT
>My best guess is that the current pattern will just get worse. 1st Word
>exploitation of 3rd World labour, overconsumption and overproduction of
>garbage, toxins, etc. Making mess in other folk's lands, exploiting them,
>letting the 3rd World go to rot.
That is indeed part of the story but I think ultimately its to passive and
views the 'third world' too much through the eyes of victimization. Events
that happen in the third world will not forever stay out of the noses of
those in the 'first world' it will become impossible for the problems to
remain isolated once they reach a certain stage.
If the planet survives it will only
But the 'planet' will survive, for at least a little while until swallowed
by an exploding sun at which point the matter which had constuted it will go
to take another form... Indeed it is quite conceivable -no, practically
certain- that if civilization did suffer a collapse that life would still
continue and even that humans would continue for at least a while. Not to
say of course that such a collapse wouldn't constitute a 'disaster'.
>be if
>humans:
>1. depopulate despotically
>2. civilisation collpses forcing depopulation
>3. go bucolic (same as 2.)
>4. find technological solutions and depopulate quasi-autonomously
1 + 4. So if civilization survives its crisis for a while longer than it
will only be through the institution of fascist distopias.
And the other possibility... that we shall expend ourselves like so many
lemmings. Although I feel the necessity like Mr.Johnson to take that joyful
and terrifying step beyond the 'Apocalypse', to realize the 'disaster' as
one that has already taken place in an immemorial past, to renounce any
ultimate attempt at the (out)calculation of destiny... still I feel a lump
rise in my simian throat and a knot in all-too-human stomach at the thought
of these 'possibilities'. And I do feel in my own, very limited way a
certain force of obligation that arises from who knows where... no doubt an
effect of genetic programming if looked at in that way but it is I think
none the less real and fundamental for that... the being of dasein is care.
finite, limited, but real.
Dave X-).
>Population is THE BIG PROBLEM. It is always population pressures that force
>civilization into crisis - 13th Century, 16th century, 20th century ...
>it's
>always population that is the biggest cause of the crisis.
>
>:) Chris
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David M. Patt, University of Michigan
the trapdoor in the sun X-).
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