Metastatic Modernity #13: A Species out of Context

[@noname-ll2vk]

"It's a temporary stunt...an incredible spectacle..." Great summary of our modern technological obsession.

[@RodBarkerdigitalmediablog]

Thanks Tom for making your material available, I'm learning and changing, and learning to communicate the change to others around me.

[@The_Endless_VoidZz]

Thank you, very thought provoking.

[@jeffreyburdges1293]

I love the term ecologically adrift, very nice. :)

[@amorfo9127]

I think the reaction of the scientific community to this conflict is a renewed interest in genetics: they search to adapt technology to the context of life (not their lifestyle to the context) always with the purpose of serve us of course that premise is untouched, so what you get is a bunch of people researching "self-repairable materials" or "mutant algae that massively reproduce themselves to serve as an eficient source of biodiesel". Successes have been partial for now, sometimes due to the complex interactions that life has between all their elements, for example yesterday I was watching a conference in which a genetist present a variety of weat seeds that gives (in the best case) 40% more kg/h, at the end, a person from the audience asks: "What impact does this grain have on soil nutrient uptake?" the expert answer was "I don't know" ...his job was to "design a crazy profitable variety" how that thing interact with the surrounding ecosystem is just out of his scope. I must say, the ways in which this damned civilization is searching for alternatives are pretty scary...

[@coweatsman]

It's what I call "techno bargaining" as in the bargaining stage of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's 5 stages of grief (at losing our way of life). The stages being denial, depression, anger, bargaining and acceptance. All of civilisation's problems have in one way or another being solved by throwing mowing at a problem which only creates more problems in the future, solved by throwing more energy at them (civilisational dukka). We live in a time when the problem is that we are using too much energy and that can not by definition be solved by throwing more energy at it.

[@robertgulfshores4463]

Wow, yes, very intense, but needed. Loved this! I often imagine how I could live in a way that would be beneficial to the natural systems.

[@grab_your_parachutes]

I think we're too far off the cliff edge at this point. We've entered into serious feedback conditions with too much heat, CO2 and Methane in the system and entering the system. There is only one outcome to this, folks just can't face it yet imo!

[@chesterfinecat7588]

In my 20s in the 60s people called me Chicken Little. 74 now I may live to see the great dying. One more extinction among all the species that have come and gone. They're going to scrape e the green fields around me to make a giant toxic solar plant so it can hum our tune even after nobody is asking AI how they can make more money.

[@coweatsman]

Flying like a brick would describe going over the cliff.

[@chesterfinecat7588]

Only the first lemmings have a hard landing.

[@ricwilliams9922]

How we experience the world radically changes when we experience it with or without Ego, including its dreams of supremacy. Viewed with Ego, we experience the world as interacting, separate things each of which we consider a single thing, such as one particle, one grain of sand, or one person. Viewed without Ego we experience existence as oneness. Egoic science discerns the logic of parts; non-egoic science discerns the logic of ONENESS-IN-ITSELF. The wisdom of deep time reflects the logic of ONENESS-IN-ITSELF. To gain a sufficiently high-altitude perspective on modernity requires recognizing how the extremely large is One with the extremely small. Logic binds existence. An important step in knowing this logic is losing the individual Ego.

[@Glen-uy4jt]

There are 3 ways to use the mind, or view the world, Ego, Feeling, Rational thought. But they are all a means by perception. Then the subconscious also has effects. I refer you to the Tao te Ching, if you know it you cannot name it, if you name it you cannot know it, paraphrased of course. Then enters the emotions which are a huge impediment to free thought or even to be free of thoughts. Then of course there are real feelings and false or manufactured feelings.

[@ricwilliams9922]

@@Glen-uy4jt Imagine mind (Self), with it's feeling (emotions), thought, sensate knowing, and intuition to be like a donut. The Ego is the center of the donut seeing itself and only itself. Imagine the center of the donut annihilated (permanently ceasing). What remains? What is the structure of Self? The donut now has a hole as Self continues with a hole at the center. Without Ego, the subconscious vanishes. All major spiritualities agree Ego must go; where they disagree is what remains. Taoists speak of Tao, Hindus speak of Atman, Buddhists speak of An-atman, Jews speak of YHWH, Christians speak of Logos, scientific materialists speak of space. Whatever remains, whatever the structure of the donut, humanity speaks. Tom uses logic to wonderful effect. A weakness of the European Enlightenment is missing non-Egoic Logic.

[@chesterfinecat7588]

Read 'All and Everything (Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson)" and take the step. Lead your own cult. Return to the center with a full rack.

[@SSS11193]

This is great. Why dont you start intervieiing people. Bill rees would be great imo.

[@ReesCatOphuls]

Yes, i was thinking Bill Rees, regarding mental models which we invent, and they live as if those models are real.

[@alandoane9168]

@@ReesCatOphuls It's almost as if humans are...deluding themselves. 🤣

[@mrrecluse7002]

All we can do is make our calculations on how fast, and hard we are going down, (unless saved by lady luck), and to guess what our role in this planetary mess means. We are both an aberration, and abomination, (when it comes to our ecocidal tendencies), and the most vexing question is where to assign blame? Taken at face value, it appears that we are a sort of failed experiment of evolution, as a bipedal ape, with an opposable thumb, a mind boggling capacity towards violence, mental illnesses of an astounding variety, propelled by a complex brain that just does not fit in this formerly garden paradise. It therefore seems apparent to me that we are the fault of nature itself, through the process of natural evolution. We did not come into this world. We grew out of it. How weird we are.

[@ReesCatOphuls]

Intense and so much excellent content and mental images for a short video. Have you watched Douglas Adams talk about the Kakapo? ( kzbin.info/www/bejne/qXTWeaili6Z1nas ). Made me think of real time stupidity being deep time genius, and vice versa.

[@Glen-uy4jt]

What is the one common thread within all living organisms? Does that thread have a goal? Where does that goal come from?

[@alandoane9168]

I believe it's expressed as "Be fruitful and multiply," in some religious texts. Which was a fine strategy before the invention of agriculture and more urgently the beginning of fossil fuel exploitation, which is rapidly destroying the biosphere.

[@Glen-uy4jt]

@@alandoane9168 I asked the common thread in ALL living organisms, not just humans. I would say that the Bible is a poor reference book but may contain some relevant information. It would be impossible to use the Bible as a reference while talking about evolution.

[@evilryutaropro]

Resist entropy

[@Glen-uy4jt]

@@evilryutaropro good advice, difficult to implement

[@doctorshawzy6477]

🎉i wrote a long response..then deleted it by accident.!! I am going to bed!!!!!

[@jimbelton]

Is the problem really modernity, or is it rather a population that is too large to be maintained sustainably by the environment? I.e. is there not a level of modern population that is sustainable? I would think so.

[@coweatsman]

Is there really a difference? What allows for such a large population? Medicine and there modernity. Fossil fuelled economy, first by steam powered transport allowing food to reach a wider more dispersed market and second by turning modern agriculture into the use of land to turn petrochemical products into food. Think the Haber Bosch process.

[@tommurphy2694]

Our brains are capable of "thinking so" even without comprehension of the whole complex set of interrelationships, or deep ecological awareness. But I tend to discount our flash judgments. As modernity depends on non-renewable substances, is exceedingly short-lived, and causes ecological harm even when scaled down 3 orders-of-magnitude (based on the past), I have no solid basis to think or suspect it can somehow be done--especially lacking any compelling analysis to that effect.

[@chesterfinecat7588]

Sure, you can have it all. Of course you can. Our globe with 500,000 people who order anything they need through Amazon and sail super-yachts with a robotic crew which also milks the cow and puts locally grown food out for din din. That's what we're shooting for don't you think?

[@StressRUs]

Great stuff, but, unfortunately, little or no emphasis on the key problem of TOO MANY HUMANS using too many natural resources and producing too much pollution, including excess heat energy driving climate collapse. We are the most narcissistic species ever and seem not to give a damn that any child born today may well see a 6 degC global temp increase over the 1991-2020 baseline by 2047, when that unlucky 23 yo finds him/herself in the midst of a world on fire, flooding, and desertifying, as billions scramble for somewhere to hide from the collapsing climate. Enjoy Milton. You ain't seen nothin' yet.

[@maboiteaspamspammaboite9670]

the idea of a tension between modernity and evolution is a very interesting way to put it. If we consider the brain as a step for self reflectivity in the evolutionary process, then it is an attempt to auto catalyze the on going chemical reaction. Thus, the current catastrophic ecological situation we are in is the result of a failure in that attempt. In theory we have the biological tools, the brain, to prevent such problems, but in practice we are failing at it, we are desperately spiraling in a dangerous territory for that whole experiment to persist and thrives.

[@maboiteaspamspammaboite9670]

from an individual perspective, to survive means something, but from a systemic POV, i think it is inappropriate. I would not say that within a chemical reaction a compound survived, it behaved, i guess. It inhabited the phase shift produced by the reaction that produces B out of A. The reaction would not have happened to begin with if those compounds were not there, therefor, an out of context compound would not have "survived" a transition that would have not happen anyway. we are a part of the whole, the whole, that one, would not be without the parts, those parts, we dont survive the whole, we flow in, and if the conditions are appropriate we thrives in as the major reactive compound. I guess. Soooo, i d say, the question is not will humanity survive, but rather, can the chemical reaction, within what it exists, persists longer in time and overflow over the rest (vast amount) of space available. In that regard extra corporeal evolution is not out of context.