House of Eratosthenes

We humans, being more intellectually capable than all the other animals, unfortunately can enjoy a unique “gift” of being able to lie to ourselves. We can cobble together a phony reality of our own choosing and then select it over the one we see right in front of us, as no other species on the globe can. There are some among us who regretfully make a profession out of that, and others among us who regretfully patronize their professions, and others among us who regretfully encourage it all.

Humans have therefore been uniquely equipped to invent religion, which asks us to believe in things we can’t see; and cults, which require us to disbelieve things we’ve seen right in front of us. The former of the two helps to preserve our sanity, if we value it, and the latter of the two destroys what’s left of our sanity, if we so allow.

One of the most dangerous cults we’ve invented is also among the most widespread. It has no name, and can be identified only by way of approximations such as “radical environmentalism.” Without stringing the actual words together, it proffers a belief that humans are a toxin upon the planet, which would be far better off if we just went away. It reaches this conclusion about our uniquely intelligent species because we have used this intellect to build things that help us, which is something beavers do and birds do. “Yes,” the cultists would counter, “but beavers don’t build nuclear plants.” They’d be right. But that would be topic drift. Their movement doesn’t target human beings as the one species that doesn’t belong here, because of what we build; their movement targets human beings as the one species that doesn’t belong here, because humans are the ones who are supposed to be receiving the message. It is a message for dopes who hate their own kind, or want to be fed reasons for hating their own kind. It is a reinforcement of self hatred.

Everyone who applies some good old-fashioned common sense to what they’re hearing and seeing, knows this to be true. Some would protest, with legitimacy, that I am overstating their position unfairly. To them, I present two matters of indisputable fact. One, my state of California is in “lockdown,” as is much of the rest of the world. Two, that there are lots of outspoken, fuzzy-brained casual-thinkers who are celebrating this as a good thing. They have been programmed. They don’t know they have been programmed and they think their opinions are their own.

It seems to be so hard for so many thoughtful people to truly reckon with the ramifications of what they know to be true. The indoctrinating has been going on at least since I was a moppet, and I’m a crusty old fart now. Humans are poisoning the planet, humans are poisoning the planet, humans are poisoning the planet. The “real scientists” who prepare and vet these lists of ways humans impact the environment, are considerably younger than I am. They have been bathed, just like people my age, in this stew their whole lives. They are more activists than scientists, and they don’t know they are more activists than scientists. They have been lying to themselves. Oh yes, I’m sure in the strictest technical sense every little point they want to make is “true.” But everybody’s suspicions should be aroused when global warming, climate change and ocean acidification are listed as three separate bullets. Also, that lists like these are entirely devoid of any beneficial effects we might have on the environment. Then you know an agenda is underway. The people making such lists are pushing the agenda, or else they’re being fed their information by someone else pushing the agenda, failing to do the skeptical thinking that anyone positioned downstream is going to have to do on their behalf.

You’re better off relying on another list that might contain some overlap, wherever it’s scientifically verifiable — but contains a mix of harmful and beneficial effects we have on our ecosystem. That’s more in keeping with what we know about other living things having effects upon yet other living things. There is harm over here, there are beneficial effects over there; parasitic relationships and symbiotic relationships.

We’re not a toxin upon the planet. At the very least, we’re not a pure toxin; and we’re probably not a net toxin. I don’t think we are. I think, on balance, we are beneficial. There’s so much stuff out there trying to convince me of the opposite, and it’s just so energized and so enthusiastic, involving so many willing participants…and yet it continues to rely on leaving out so much & hoping I don’t go looking elsewhere to fill in the gaps. If your propaganda is true, on balance, then there’s no need for it to have been made into propaganda in the first place.

Am I relying on faulty logic here, or a gap in logic, or on logic that is less than solid? Eh, could very well be. I don’t intend this as a logical argument. I’m just capturing how I think of it. Zillions of dollars of money have been spent in an effort to convince my generation that humans are poisoning the planet. A lot of that came from taxpayers, which is wrong. I have yet to be convinced and that’s why; not the ethical problems with forcing taxpayers to pay for the propaganda drive, just the energetic disbursement of the propaganda drive itself. The truth shouldn’t demand so much sustained effort. Our curiosity about nature is, well, natural. If a sprawling out-of-control leviathan government has to move resources around this way to tell us what’s so, it’s likely not so.

Now comes the Wuhan Flu, or the Chinese Virus, or “COVID-19” if you want to be politically correct about it. The World Health Organization thinks it’s very important that you be kept from thinking of it as anything Asian. Now you see, that’s another thing; the politically correct argument doesn’t even make sense according to itself. Humans are a pox upon the planet — and Asian people are not. This reminds me of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, during the early days, before the blue dress, when it was still he-said she-said. “Doesn’t matter, public performance versus private, personal, secret private life. Everybody screws around on their marriage! All the politicians cheat on their wives! …And he didn’t!!”

Well in times like these, it’s very important that we know which agencies are functioning as scientific organizations, and which ones are functioning as political ones. There is no scientific value involved in programming me to think of the Wuhan Flu as something other than the Wuhan Flu — none whatsoever. So thanks for clearing that up, now I know WHO is a political organization and not a scientific one.

I truly don’t care. I don’t need a reprimand from a busybody political establishment to think of Asians as somehow exempted from the human race that is doing this damage, because I don’t think the human race is doing damage. I know Communist China has done injury to humanity as a whole, and that makes the human race the injured and not the injurer. “Communist China” is a country, not a race. Who still needs to have that spelled out for them? I mean, besides that twit at President Trump’s press conference. Who besides her?

Well, the race baiters are flailing about like hungry dogs chasing scraps, because they’re starving. It’s testable. “Chinese Virus” is a racist term, really? You wouldn’t be falling back on that if you had anything better.

Getting back to the subject at hand, though. For those who advance the narrative that humans are a poison on the planet, there is something better. Something fresh, new and topical. Good for them…bad for the rest of us.

Italy’s tourism industry took a hit as the number of COVID-19 cases in the country spiked in recent weeks. But those who remain in the city have posted heartwarming photos of dolphins, swans and ducks making their appearances in canals and ports.

“Venice hasn’t seen clear canal water in a very long time,” Francesco Delrio wrote. “Dolphins showing up too. Nature just hit the reset button on us.”

Some of this is bull squeeze, and easily debunked. The water looking cleaner in Venice is looking cleaner because of simple stillness; sediment still lies at the bottom of the canal, without any boat traffic to stir it up toward the surface. And no, the dolphins aren’t there. That’s not what interests me though.

What captures my attention is the part of it that, for now, is really true. Pollution that is connected directly to human activity, is down, since the activity is down. That much has to be true, right? Right. We do “pollute” when we go about our business, just like any other species. So the human-haters do have a point, do they not? We’re getting to see an advance preview of a post-human world, and it’s looking just as healthy and vibrant as they imagined. The people themselves, where they can be found, look happier too! Yes…I’ve seen them. Walking their dogs, jogging, etc. Singing on Instagram, etc…like the spoiled Hollywood actors singing that horrible commie song just for one example. There are others. Singing, singing, singing…all the happy people.

Haven’t you listened to the words, though? “Living for today.” Living for today…

That’s the whole problem. The intended audience for this pablum is not just people who nurture their festering hatred of other people just for being people — but also, people who lack a functional understanding of the fundamental concept of time. They’re celebrating a lifestyle that isn’t sustainable as if it’s sustainable. Now some of them may have pure intentions and simply want a cleaner Earth. But if so, and they’re still swallowing this hooey, then they’re not thinking.

This is not where we want to be. People are existing day-to-day, but they’re not thriving. For those who gravitate to sugary things, consider that socially-distanced kids can’t play together and can’t hug each other. Yes, you can dangle your feet off a balcony and play a guitar, but nobody can sit on the same balcony with you, dangling their feet next to you. But then there’s the business, the money, the working for a living. I’m more worried about that kind of stuff and everyone else should be more worried about that, too.

I don’t wish to rain on a parade that is stoking lots of good sentiment & feeling in so many strangers whom I assume are good people with good intentions. And like all sane people I consider messages of despair, even when true, to be better left unsaid. I have left this one unsaid for awhile. But I draw the line at pretending a negative is a positive. This is a whole new frontier of wrongness, and the fact that it makes lots of people feel good is no reason to allow it to careen about unchecked. Whole new frontiers of wrongness often make lots of people feel good. That’s what demons do. Evil is seductive.

This is not good. It is Pandora’s demons that have been allowed to escape a literal, physical “box.” It’s way too soon to lapse into the cloying pap about “Let’s not assign blame” when we don’t even know if the box was opened on purpose or by accident. Or if the box was built & filled on purpose, and opened by accident.

After half a century of listening to it, I’m past the limit of my patience with pretending there’s just one single species of animal living on the planet that’s bad for it. It doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. It isn’t scientific, it’s a child’s fairy tale relying overly much on Disney imagery filled with big-eyed adorable woodland creatures with cute names, every last one of them on a vegetarian (or grub) diet. It’s nonsense. The truth is that spiders kill flies painfully, lions kill gazelles painfully, species build habitats that screw things up for other species. And we’re all changing the environment, sometimes permanently sometimes not, with our daily business. That’s how an ecosystem works.

I started out noting that humans have intellectual capabilities other species do not have. I’m sure I lost a good portion of my readership with that opening…true as it is. There are ramifications to it. We have the unique ability to look, today, at the apparatus we assembled to make our living possible, yesterday, and ask ourselves what sort of impact it has on the environment. And to see if there’s a way to do the same thing more efficiently. If you accept that a unique ability may necessarily be fastened to an accompanying unique responsibility, then you must accept we have the responsibility to continually do this. To downsize to the more economical car, where it makes practical sense to do so, to swap out in favor of a more efficient light bulb where it makes sense to do so.

I will buy into just that much. Because, why not? I have no constructive statement to make by driving around in a V-8 when I can do the same thing with a four-banger. But I already drive a four-banger. I’m cheap and I don’t want to burn off that much of my lucre on gas, I’d rather blow the balance of it on beer, beef steak, ammunition or put it in savings. That is how intelligent creatures do things…naturally. We don’t need our benevolent government to push us into doing things an easier way. We gravitate toward whatever is more efficient, and we continually reassess. Which makes us, if anything, the most congenial species upon the surface of the planet — over the longer term of time. Long term, we are the best stewards because of our uniqueness as a species that acts like a steward.

We never needed a movement. We don’t need one now. We socially distance because it makes good sense. The “experts” say we can make a significant positive impact against the spread of this virus by taking these steps, now, and we don’t have to look at the history of these pandemics too long to see for ourselves that they’re right about that.

But this is not a positive development. My whole point here is that Gaea is not going to care what we do or don’t do, for a couple of weeks, or a month, or two months or more. She won’t care even a tiny bit, unless we’ve discovered some new lifestyle we can afford to maintain (and even then, only that tiny bit). We can’t afford to maintain this. The implication that we can, or that the Earth cares about it as if we can, is grossly irresponsible. At some point we’re going to have to move past this. It will be quick or it will be slow, but either way it will be wrenching. We’re going to rape Gaea like a three pecker billy goat made of rebar, when it’s time to get going again, because we’re going to be needing the things we have always been needing. Like any other species, we are toughest on the environment when we are under stress.

But our day-to-day activities, allowed to endure and evolve without scarcity or stress, don’t poison the planet. They affect the planet, just a little bit, which is fine. On balance, you are good. I am good. We all are a net good. And we need to get back to work.

Stop this nonsense.

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We’re Not a Toxin Upon the PlanetSunday, March 22nd, 2020

We’re Not a Toxin Upon the Planet
Sunday, March 22nd, 2020