You've heard about Jewish Holocaust deniers and about Climate Holocaust deniers but who, you ask in bewilderment, are the NATURE-DENIERS ?
Well they're not Commensalists - the Age of Commensality believes all life on Earth, willy-nilly, dines at a common table (in a word is all commensal) - it believes mankind is not above Nature but fully in it - so it hardly denies Nature .
No, these deniers are all varieties of Modernists, people who believe that we can, if necessary, get along perfectly well without natural resources or indeed without Nature and even without those people they see as being closest to Nature.
The millions of people that the Nazis shot, gassed and starved in their Holocaust were (*almost) all people they viewed as living in a world far away from civilized man and close to (bestial) Nature.
(* I admit I think the Nazis had mixed feelings about the Communist commissars, Polish intellectuals and educated Jews that they killed .
They saw most Poles, Slavs and Jews as close to animals and germs but saw the intellectuals among them as even more dangerous, because they were both 'smart' and 'dirty' .)
It must be admitted that the Nazis lacked ambition - they only killed 6 million in the most organized part of their killing spree.
Today's climate change deniers might just end up killing 6 billion of us if the world's climate goes to hell in a hand basket at the same time we run out of agricultural necessities like phosphorus.
(Solar might get us past the worst of the end of oil and coal -- but we can't expect the nuclear industry to transform us up a mess of the element phosphorus out of lead like some 21st century alchemist.)
The climate change deniers along with the environmental degradation deniers and resource depletion deniers are like the Nazis in basically denying that Nature can bite back .
So they assume, for example, that Nature can take all the Co2 we can hand it and just deal with it, somehow.
"Suck it up Nature !"
Modernity is supposed to have an Imperialistic side , a sort of evil twin brother hidden off to the side.
Bosh, I say, bosh.
Modernity only had one colony and always one colony - Nature.
Every other subject they colonized - from women and children, the poor and the disabled, to people in places like India and Africa - were always subjugated because they were judged close to Nature ------- and hence fair game.
Notice that none of the modernist nations ever seriously thought of turning other modernist nations into colonies -- this was called 'honor amongst modernists' ....
Friday, March 16, 2012
The paradox of our new AGE of COMMENSALITY
Our new Age of Commensality is based on Science, but not really based on Scientists.
The bulk of our scientists have given tepid lip service to the discoveries of their colleagues that form the basis for Commensality.
But they have not really accepted or fully acted upon the intellectual implications of those discoveries for their own work or their own world view.
In other words, these discoveries have become Public (published in peer reviewed journals, including all of the biggest) but they haven't become Popular (for example, taught in high school classrooms or put front and centre in high school textbooks).
Modernity has lost its cachet in basic science but flourishes almost as strong as ever in applied science - and above all in applied technology (that warm fetid home of the NATURE-DENIERS) .
Asking school boards to teach commensality might be too much to ask.
(Somehow talking about Nature makes these so called "Evangelicals" reach for their unregistered long gun... don't know, maybe the thought that Jesus was all for Commensality makes them 'agin it', on principle.)
But why don't High Schools at least teach "Quantum Physics for the Non Scientist" as it is the basis of all science and has been so for 100 years ?
The best place to take on the NATURE-DENIERS is probably not in the classroom.
No one is more timid and PC than a school board administrator so we best stick to more open and public forums such as blogs and at public meetings.....
The bulk of our scientists have given tepid lip service to the discoveries of their colleagues that form the basis for Commensality.
But they have not really accepted or fully acted upon the intellectual implications of those discoveries for their own work or their own world view.
In other words, these discoveries have become Public (published in peer reviewed journals, including all of the biggest) but they haven't become Popular (for example, taught in high school classrooms or put front and centre in high school textbooks).
Modernity has lost its cachet in basic science but flourishes almost as strong as ever in applied science - and above all in applied technology (that warm fetid home of the NATURE-DENIERS) .
Asking school boards to teach commensality might be too much to ask.
(Somehow talking about Nature makes these so called "Evangelicals" reach for their unregistered long gun... don't know, maybe the thought that Jesus was all for Commensality makes them 'agin it', on principle.)
But why don't High Schools at least teach "Quantum Physics for the Non Scientist" as it is the basis of all science and has been so for 100 years ?
The best place to take on the NATURE-DENIERS is probably not in the classroom.
No one is more timid and PC than a school board administrator so we best stick to more open and public forums such as blogs and at public meetings.....
Thursday, March 15, 2012
All of us, ALL OF US, have spent the majority of our lives in "The Age of Commensality"
BLOG MISSION STATEMENT :We must all learn to live together with and in Nature: all diners at her common table (commensal) or we must all learn to die together, frying in the upcoming global climate meltdown."
The Age of Commensality has a distinctly abrupt beginning as Eras go : bang ! -1945 - you're on !
That was the year of the Nuremberg Trial revelations about Auschwitz and Nazi Death Doctors, the year of Dresden and Hiroshima.
Bang ! indeed.
This means that unless you are 135 years old (and you're not) , the majority of your life has been spent not living in The Age of Modernity.
So what Age, then, have you been living in all these years ?
There is a wide (academic) consensus about the post-1945 changes in the way most of us humans perceive Reality and think about Reality.
But there is no consensus on whether they hang together in a consistent way and if so, exactly what then to call them.
The current placeholder name Postmodernity won't do and everyone knows it.
What will we then call the next Age after this and the one after that : Post-Post-Modernity and Post-Post-Post-Post-Modernity ?
Why bother with calling the 19th Century 'The Age of Romanticism' - why not simply call it The Age Of Post-Classicalism ?
My sense is that the Modern Age clearly thought and acted as if humans, in some essential sense, dined above and beyond Nature.
However, our own Age sees more and more clearly that we are bound into Nature, ie we're inside Nature and densely interconnected with all of it, like it or not.
I don't mean milk and honey/ lamb down with lions /turn the other cheek /interconnectedness --- I mean we're stuck into it.
If we are survive, we must see that our fellow life forms are also given their fair chance to survive as well, even if that means we must restrain our own appetites today so we can have a little something tomorrow.
We now intuitively realize that we all dine at one great common table.
Whenever things start to go wrong with the water,carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and you-name-it cycles, it hits everyone from bacteria to babies.
Commensality (as this word is used by students of religion and anthropology/sociology, not in the distinctly odd way biologists use it ) seems to me to be the term that best describes the basket of ideas that makes up Postmodernity.
I hope to hear of other rival terms that claim to better describe the post-modern condition.
Fair enough - bring 'em on cable boys and girls !
Anything is better than lamely continuing to use the term postmodernity.
Soon this 67 year old Old Age Pensioner will be older than the Age it has replaced - but 67 years on, it doesn't deserve to still be an orphan without a name ....
All of us, ALL OF US, have spent the majority of our lives in "The Age of Commensality"
 |
| Michael Marshall |
That was the year of the Nuremberg Trial revelations about Auschwitz and Nazi Death Doctors, the year of Dresden and Hiroshima.
Bang ! indeed.
This means that unless you are 135 years old (and you're not) , the majority of your life has been spent not living in The Age of Modernity.
So what Age, then, have you been living in all these years ?
There is a wide (academic) consensus about the post-1945 changes in the way most of us humans perceive Reality and think about Reality.
But there is no consensus on whether they hang together in a consistent way and if so, exactly what then to call them.
The current placeholder name Postmodernity won't do and everyone knows it.
What will we then call the next Age after this and the one after that : Post-Post-Modernity and Post-Post-Post-Post-Modernity ?
Why bother with calling the 19th Century 'The Age of Romanticism' - why not simply call it The Age Of Post-Classicalism ?
My sense is that the Modern Age clearly thought and acted as if humans, in some essential sense, dined above and beyond Nature.
However, our own Age sees more and more clearly that we are bound into Nature, ie we're inside Nature and densely interconnected with all of it, like it or not.
I don't mean milk and honey/ lamb down with lions /turn the other cheek /interconnectedness --- I mean we're stuck into it.
If we are survive, we must see that our fellow life forms are also given their fair chance to survive as well, even if that means we must restrain our own appetites today so we can have a little something tomorrow.
We now intuitively realize that we all dine at one great common table.
Whenever things start to go wrong with the water,carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and you-name-it cycles, it hits everyone from bacteria to babies.
Commensality (as this word is used by students of religion and anthropology/sociology, not in the distinctly odd way biologists use it ) seems to me to be the term that best describes the basket of ideas that makes up Postmodernity.
I hope to hear of other rival terms that claim to better describe the post-modern condition.
Fair enough - bring 'em on cable boys and girls !
Anything is better than lamely continuing to use the term postmodernity.
Soon this 67 year old Old Age Pensioner will be older than the Age it has replaced - but 67 years on, it doesn't deserve to still be an orphan without a name ....
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Other Lifeforms make much of our chemists' compounds and molecules
"We must all learn to live together within Nature: all diners at her common table (commensal) or all learn to die together, frying up in the upcoming global climate meltdown." (Blog Mission Statement.)If you believe your High School Chemist teacher, a very unwise thing to do, you might think that chemists spend their days creating things out of atoms and elements.
I won't say it never happens or that it had never happened, but its rare.
Chemists might occasionally work with molecules
of a pure element ,but generally, if atoms and elements were human beings, they'd be described as compulsive 'joiners' .
For simple molecules and compounds, they usually do the joining themselves, assisted by a natural catalyst that just happens to be hanging about combined with geological heat and pressure.
But if what they're joining is something complex and hence useful, it might take millions or billions of years to happen on its own, chemically and geologically.
That is unless a really good catalyst is giving a helping hand , like those biological wonder-workers, the enzymes.
Reactions that have a half-live of billions of years can then take place in milliseconds, at ordinary temperature and pressure.
This is why all those 'Chemistry is Modern Alchemy' ads are really bosh.
They don't actually make nylons out of pure hydrogen gas, pure oxygen gas and pure carbon atoms - at least not economically - not in a million years.
No, they start with coal tar, (and water and air and many other unnamed chemical reagents) which far from being useless waste, is actually the end product of billions of years of life forms creating complex carbon ringed molecules with enzymes.
To save us massive amounts of capital and energy, we use these biologically-synthesized molecules as starting blocks for human ingenuity to turn into nylons and thousands of other things.
But once coal and petroleum are gone and trees too valuable to burn up to create wood tar, we are going to find chemists will need much more energy and capital ( both in very short supply when coal and petroleum is gone) to create the wonders of chemistry from just simple pure elements and atoms.
Biology is the basement foundation of today's organic chemistry production, we can not - despite economists' claims - 'in effect, get along perfectly well without it'.....
Other Lifeforms make much of our chemists' compounds and molecules
If you believe your High School Chemist teacher, a very unwise thing to do, you might think that chemists spend their days creating things out of atoms and elements.
Michael Marshall
I won't say it never happens or that it had never happened, but its rare.
Chemists might occasionally work with molecules
of a pure element ,but generally, if atoms and elements were human beings, they'd be described as compulsive 'joiners' .
For simple molecules and compounds, they usually do the joining themselves, assisted by a natural catalyst that just happens to be hanging about combined with geological heat and pressure.
But if what they're joining is something complex and hence useful, it might take millions or billions of years to happen on its own, chemically and geologically.
That is unless a really good catalyst is giving a helping hand , like those biological wonder-workers, the enzymes.
Reactions that have a half-live of billions of years can then take place in milliseconds, at ordinary temperature and pressure.
This is why all those 'Chemistry is Modern Alchemy' ads are really bosh.
They don't actually make nylons out of pure hydrogen gas, pure oxygen gas and pure carbon atoms - at least not economically - not in a million years.
No, they start with coal tar, (and water and air and many other unnamed chemical reagents) which far from being useless waste, is actually the end product of billions of years of life forms creating complex carbon ringed molecules with enzymes.
To save us massive amounts of capital and energy, we use these biologically-synthesized molecules as starting blocks for human ingenuity to turn into nylons and thousands of other things.
But once coal and petroleum are gone and trees too valuable to burn up to create wood tar, we are going to find chemists will need much more energy and capital ( both in very short supply when coal and petroleum is gone) to create the wonders of chemistry from just simple pure elements and atoms.
Biology is the basement foundation of today's organic chemistry production, we can not - despite economists' claims - 'in effect, get along perfectly well without it'.....
Who is the Commensalist ????
We must all learn to live together within Nature: all diners at her common table (commensal) or all learn to die together, frying up in the upcoming global climate meltdown." (Blog Mission Statement.)
Well.... it isn't me --- I mean I am a commensalist, very much so ---- but I am not THE COMMENSALIST
I consider that honor belongs to Martin Henry Dawson.
Dawson was not the first or the most prominent basic scientist to dive deep into biological commensality, in the exact scientific sense of the word.
Nor was he the first by any means to demonstrate acts of ethical commensality - that happened a long, long time ago.
But I believe he was the first ever to act ethically upon what he had newly learned scientifically : in my sense of the terms, he exhibited Scientific Good Faith rather than Scientific Bad Faith .
That is his Popular Science (assembling a small ramshackle operation to grow penicillium slime so he could save the lives of unwanted terminal 4F patients with impure penicillin) ( a joint commensal operation of doctors, 4F patients and microbes) was created in the same spirit as what he had learned in his Public Science : seeing Nature's smallest, weakest, "stupidest" beings display the amazing ability to surmount difficulty after difficulty to go on living.
At a time when all his medical and scientific colleagues world wide had drunk deep of the Kool Aid of Chemical Autarky and produced no penicillin, he worked instead with Nature's smallest, weakest beings to help Humanity's smallest, weakest beings when they needed it most ...
To add that he did all this when he himself was dying of a painful disease, seems almost trite.....
Who is the Commensalist ????
|
| Michael Marshall |
I consider that honor belongs to Martin Henry Dawson.
Dawson was not the first or the most prominent basic scientist to dive deep into biological commensality, in the exact scientific sense of the word.
Nor was he the first by any means to demonstrate acts of ethical commensality - that happened a long, long time ago.
But I believe he was the first ever to act ethically upon what he had newly learned scientifically : in my sense of the terms, he exhibited Scientific Good Faith rather than Scientific Bad Faith .
That is his Popular Science (assembling a small ramshackle operation to grow penicillium slime so he could save the lives of unwanted terminal 4F patients with impure penicillin) ( a joint commensal operation of doctors, 4F patients and microbes) was created in the same spirit as what he had learned in his Public Science : seeing Nature's smallest, weakest, "stupidest" beings display the amazing ability to surmount difficulty after difficulty to go on living.
At a time when all his medical and scientific colleagues world wide had drunk deep of the Kool Aid of Chemical Autarky and produced no penicillin, he worked instead with Nature's smallest, weakest beings to help Humanity's smallest, weakest beings when they needed it most ...
To add that he did all this when he himself was dying of a painful disease, seems almost trite.....
The very naughty Charles LYELL ....
"We must all learn to live together within Nature: all diners at her common table (commensal) or all learn to die together, frying up in the upcoming global climate meltdown." (Blog Mission Statement.)
Modernist Man still views life on earth through the prism of geology, the legacy of that very wicked barrister Sir Charles Lyell.
Man's continued existence on Planet Earth, in this schema, is practically guaranteed by the fact that the geological processes of the earth are supposedly uniform in character , uniform all over the world and uniform in nature back to the beginnings of time.
Supposedly these geological forces are what created and sustain the great natural cycles - the circulation streams of rain, water and air and of oxygen,nitrogen, carbon, sulfur et al.
But while it is true that because our planet was stony with a fluid metallic core, this allowed life the ability to begin here, most of those vast natural circulations wouldn't exist if life, Microbe Life mostly, didn't sustain them.
In fact most of the minerals and ore bodies that we take for granted as being of geological origin, actually were created and assembled by biological forces.
True, Geology gave us all the elements that make up the Earth - but most of our minerals and compounds owe some or all of their creation to Life forces.
Man, pace Robert Solow, could not live on rocks alone - we need Life to live ; all Life....
The very naughty Charles LYELL ....
|
| Michael Marshall |
Man's continued existence on Planet Earth, in this schema, is practically guaranteed by the fact that the geological processes of the earth are supposedly uniform in character , uniform all over the world and uniform in nature back to the beginnings of time.
Supposedly these geological forces are what created and sustain the great natural cycles - the circulation streams of rain, water and air and of oxygen,nitrogen, carbon, sulfur et al.
But while it is true that because our planet was stony with a fluid metallic core, this allowed life the ability to begin here, most of those vast natural circulations wouldn't exist if life, Microbe Life mostly, didn't sustain them.
In fact most of the minerals and ore bodies that we take for granted as being of geological origin, actually were created and assembled by biological forces.
True, Geology gave us all the elements that make up the Earth - but most of our minerals and compounds owe some or all of their creation to Life forces.
Man, pace Robert Solow, could not live on rocks alone - we need Life to live ; all Life....
It is a crisis as small as your NEWBORN ; it is a crisis as big as PLANET EARTH...
"We must all learn to live together within Nature: all diners at her common table (commensal) or all learn to die together, frying up in the upcoming global climate meltdown." (Blog Mission Statement.)
"Man ABOVE Nature no longer : we are all 'Nature' and we all dine together at a common table ; to paraphrase King Edward VII, "we are ALL commensalists nowadays ..."
This is this century's moral and political crisis - a crisis between this century's Commensality and the last century's Modernity ; a crisis much bigger than anything the 20th Century could throw up.
This because because despite all the violence and hatred between Communism , Capitalism and the various flavors of Fascism , they at least were all united in being Modernists, Modernists bickering amongst themselves over how best to butcher the Planet and its resources.
There doesn't seem, at first, to be any common ground between the Deniers (Fry-ers) and the green-minded citizen, but there is ---most people ultimately do want to live.
The fanatics - like Hitler and his gang - really did believe it was Better to be Dead than Red , but most us will do almost anything to live , waiting for a better day to come along.
When the temperature rises all over the planet, it might start to melt even the coldest, hardest hearts among the Modernist, leading them to see they must compromise their greed, if they wish to continue to live.
Let us pray that the greedy of this world are willing to settle for a half loaf, so the world can return to dining together, commensally, in more or less harmony....
It is a crisis as small as your NEWBORN ; it is a crisis as big as PLANET EARTH...
"Man ABOVE Nature no longer : we are all 'Nature' and we all dine together at a common table ; to paraphrase King Edward VII, "we are ALL commensalists nowadays ..."
This is this century's moral and political crisis - a crisis between this century's Commensality and the last century's Modernity ; a crisis much bigger than anything the 20th Century could throw up.
Michael Marshall
This because because despite all the violence and hatred between Communism , Capitalism and the various flavors of Fascism , they at least were all united in being Modernists, Modernists bickering amongst themselves over how best to butcher the Planet and its resources.
There doesn't seem, at first, to be any common ground between the Deniers (Fry-ers) and the green-minded citizen, but there is ---most people ultimately do want to live.
The fanatics - like Hitler and his gang - really did believe it was Better to be Dead than Red , but most us will do almost anything to live , waiting for a better day to come along.
When the temperature rises all over the planet, it might start to melt even the coldest, hardest hearts among the Modernist, leading them to see they must compromise their greed, if they wish to continue to live.
Let us pray that the greedy of this world are willing to settle for a half loaf, so the world can return to dining together, commensally, in more or less harmony....
" Commensal ---- or FRY !!!!!! "
"We must all learn to live together within Nature: all diners at her common table (commensal) or all learn to die together, frying up in the upcoming global climate meltdown." (Blog Mission Statement.)
The choice is stark --- the debate will be heated.
We must all learn to live together: all diners at Mother Nature's common table, commensal --- or we will all fry together in the upcoming global climate meltdown.
The above catchphrase sums it all up very succinctly : "Commensal ---- or FRY !!!!" *
We will all be either Commensals or Fries : just as in different situations we all seem to end up either Roundheads or Cavaliers/ Union Blue or Confederate Grey / BLUE staters or RED staters.
In the old days, say up to about 1973, the choice was equally stark and the debate equally heated.
It was about dividing Humanity's strictly limited pie.
How much to the workers ? How much left then to the bosses ?
A Zero-Sum Game.
Dressed up in its Sunday Best, it was the battle between Socialism and Capitalism.
It even engaged future King Edward VII.
Today there is a new battle, but still over the same old pie - more or less.
Today's Humanity Pie is much bigger --- much much bigger - and that is the problem.
Its bigger but it is making us sick - and making the whole world sick - because it is so big - too big.
One side of us says that unless Mankind learns to restrain its appetites and saves a little grain for Mother Nature's Golden Goose, it will stop laying its Golden Eggs for us.
The other side says we can , in effect, live very well without natural resources, nature's species - and to be frank about it - without most other people.
Like the birds and the bees and the trees, they are all 'useless mouths' consuming what could - and should - be Modernist Man's alone.
You know where I stand on this new debate that
is riveting and dividing all of Human Society.
I believe Science has shown for over hundred years - even if most scientists won't admit it - that all multi-celled life on Earth is highly and totally interdependent on each other and above all on the uni-celled life forms living invisibly on and around us.
Only these tiny life forms can truly see us multi-celled beings as 'useless mouths' they could well live without.
We can't say the reverse.
We multi-celled beings are all parasites , feeding off the world the microbes made viable well before we ever got here.
If we disappeared it still would be as viable - but if we got rid of ALL the microbes we ourselves won't be here very long - all of us would be dead in a few months.
Mankind's greedy environmental and climate changes won't really FRY the planet .
But it does mean, at the very least, that billions of humans would die.
At worse,we might even tip the world into a climate state where almost all but the tiniest multi-celled beings would die - leaving only the meekest of Live to inherit the Earth.
As the very last of our global corporate CEOs fries, I wonder if he (and it will be a HE for sure) will go off to 'that even hotter place' humming Alanis's tune, "isn't it ironic..."
* When the pioneers tumbled themselves
and their barn-fed pigs off the boat and into the New World's heavily-treed wilderness, they shoved their swine off into the woods to forge for themselves, telling them , "Root Hog ---- Die !!!!!".
Today, it much the same - either Mankind learns to live within Nature's means or he will fry up this Planet.
This is today's existential crisis for today's Modernist Man :
DENY... & FRY !!!
" Commensal ---- or FRY !!!!!! "
The choice is stark --- the debate will be heated.
Michael Marshall
We must all learn to live together: all diners at Mother Nature's common table, commensal --- or we will all fry together in the upcoming global climate meltdown.
The above catchphrase sums it all up very succinctly : "Commensal ---- or FRY !!!!" *
We will all be either Commensals or Fries : just as in different situations we all seem to end up either Roundheads or Cavaliers/ Union Blue or Confederate Grey / BLUE staters or RED staters.
In the old days, say up to about 1973, the choice was equally stark and the debate equally heated.
It was about dividing Humanity's strictly limited pie.
How much to the workers ? How much left then to the bosses ?
A Zero-Sum Game.
Dressed up in its Sunday Best, it was the battle between Socialism and Capitalism.
It even engaged future King Edward VII.
Today there is a new battle, but still over the same old pie - more or less.
Today's Humanity Pie is much bigger --- much much bigger - and that is the problem.
Its bigger but it is making us sick - and making the whole world sick - because it is so big - too big.
One side of us says that unless Mankind learns to restrain its appetites and saves a little grain for Mother Nature's Golden Goose, it will stop laying its Golden Eggs for us.
The other side says we can , in effect, live very well without natural resources, nature's species - and to be frank about it - without most other people.
Like the birds and the bees and the trees, they are all 'useless mouths' consuming what could - and should - be Modernist Man's alone.
You know where I stand on this new debate that
is riveting and dividing all of Human Society.
I believe Science has shown for over hundred years - even if most scientists won't admit it - that all multi-celled life on Earth is highly and totally interdependent on each other and above all on the uni-celled life forms living invisibly on and around us.
Only these tiny life forms can truly see us multi-celled beings as 'useless mouths' they could well live without.
We can't say the reverse.
We multi-celled beings are all parasites , feeding off the world the microbes made viable well before we ever got here.
If we disappeared it still would be as viable - but if we got rid of ALL the microbes we ourselves won't be here very long - all of us would be dead in a few months.
Mankind's greedy environmental and climate changes won't really FRY the planet .
But it does mean, at the very least, that billions of humans would die.
At worse,we might even tip the world into a climate state where almost all but the tiniest multi-celled beings would die - leaving only the meekest of Live to inherit the Earth.
As the very last of our global corporate CEOs fries, I wonder if he (and it will be a HE for sure) will go off to 'that even hotter place' humming Alanis's tune, "isn't it ironic..."
* When the pioneers tumbled themselves
and their barn-fed pigs off the boat and into the New World's heavily-treed wilderness, they shoved their swine off into the woods to forge for themselves, telling them , "Root Hog ---- Die !!!!!".
Today, it much the same - either Mankind learns to live within Nature's means or he will fry up this Planet.
This is today's existential crisis for today's Modernist Man :
DENY... & FRY !!!
When Modernity said MAN above Nature, they meant it ...
"We must all learn to live together within Nature: all diners at her common table (commensal) or all learn to die together, frying up in the upcoming global climate meltdown." (Blog Mission Statement.)The MAN bit I mean.
Modernists did (and still do) see women,children ,natives, savages,primitives, animals, ethnic minorities, the 'defective' and pretty well everybody else but themselves as part of Nature, far, far, far below them.
If you plug in 'well-off' ,'powerful', 'but still angry' ,'old', 'white' ,'protestant', 'males' you pretty well have the sort of MAN that still ,still, thinks he is not part of Nature but flying in a sort of reverie/haze/daze miles above it.
In his mind.
And I mean that literally not figuratively - these guys sorta, half, admit that their bodies are part of sordid, damp, sticky, icky, Ole Nature.
But their minds, their minds !!!
Their pure Platonic , all-seeing, all-hearing, all-knowing, minds.
They are not part of part of Nature, but rather live in a parallel universe of mathematics, logic, rationality, utilitarianism .
Cool, calculating ,un-emotional, un-sentimental Man.
This is the sort of wet dream that all well-fed ,well-off, underworked & over-praised teenage boys have.
The sort of day-dreams you have when mom and dad wait on you hand and foot and you grow up thinking the whole world is your oyster.
Spoil your child and he will end up, inevitably, spoiling your world - your whole world, from the top of the atmosphere to the bottoms of the ocean.
If our teenage sons still have these wet dreams when they grow up, then the world knows them Modernists ( or Republicans or Soviets or Fascists or Progressives.)
However, rather like the Pharisee said long ago, "I thank God that I am not a Modernist ---- I am a Commensalist..."
When Modernity said MAN above Nature, they meant it ...
Modernists did (and still do) see women,children ,natives, savages,primitives, animals, ethnic minorities, the 'defective' and pretty well everybody else but themselves as part of Nature, far, far, far below them.The MAN bit I mean.
Michael Marshall
If you plug in 'well-off' ,'powerful', 'but still angry' ,'old', 'white' ,'protestant', 'males' you pretty well have the sort of MAN that still ,still, thinks he is not part of Nature but flying in a sort of reverie/haze/daze miles above it.
In his mind.
And I mean that literally not figuratively - these guys sorta, half, admit that their bodies are part of sordid, damp, sticky, icky, Ole Nature.
But their minds, their minds !!!
Their pure Platonic , all-seeing, all-hearing, all-knowing, minds.
They are not part of part of Nature, but rather live in a parallel universe of mathematics, logic, rationality, utilitarianism .
Cool, calculating ,un-emotional, un-sentimental Man.
This is the sort of wet dream that all well-fed ,well-off, underworked & over-praised teenage boys have.
The sort of day-dreams you have when mom and dad wait on you hand and foot and you grow up thinking the whole world is your oyster.
Spoil your child and he will end up, inevitably, spoiling your world - your whole world, from the top of the atmosphere to the bottoms of the ocean.
If our teenage sons still have these wet dreams when they grow up, then the world knows them Modernists ( or Republicans or Soviets or Fascists or Progressives.)
However, rather like the Pharisee said long ago, "I thank God that I am not a Modernist ---- I am a Commensalist..."
Monday, March 12, 2012
Lack of CALORIES & CITIZENS, not lack of CHROMIUM & COAL stymied combatant nations during WWII ....
Its usually said that a lack of strategic natural resources - ferroalloys, petroleum, even coal was the downfall of Japan and Germany.
Don't buy it.
They began to run short of these materials in 1945, months away from losing a six year long war of attrition.
Running short of these materials moments before their defeat was more of a sign rather than a cause of their collapse.
The empire held and controlled by Germany between 1940 and 1944 was more or less the area held by today's EU --- just as the empire that Japan held in those years was the same as what we call the South East Asia Economic Tigers.
These two areas then and now, along with America and the former USSR, were the powerhouses of the globe - in terms of people, industry,science.
Yet these two empires failed to either adequately feed their subjects or turn them into willing citizens, prepared to work hard and die hard for those empires.
Lack of food and lack of civic support worked together in an entangled way --- if the subject people had felt warmly towards Japanese and Germans ,they would have produced the food to fill their bellies and quiet their dislike.
Lack of Calories is just another way to say lack of Citizenship and vice versa.
The modernist rulers of these empires failed to treat Nature (or people they considered lessors/close to Nature) with the respect they deserved and then paid the price when their potential strong empires collapsed from within --from lack of supporters.
The Soviets also failed to feed their people and while they inspired the naive, the rest they had to drive into battle with guns at their heads.
Things weren't so dramatic in the American and British empires but even there relatively few people were willing to volunteering for infantry, eager to drive the Japanese and Nazis from their conquests.
People did not flock to the colors in a sort of moral crusade.
Instead, they saw its as a grimly necessary 'job' and plodded into battle led by generals equally cautious and uninspiring.
True, food was more or less adequate in these empires.
But the ruling people (and the subject peoples) of empires based on a mild form of racism were hardly going to go all out to defeat other empires that were also based on racism, now were they ?
In the end, it took six long , costly, years for a half dozen world-sized empires to defeat two relatively small empires --- hardly an inspiring record...
Don't buy it.
They began to run short of these materials in 1945, months away from losing a six year long war of attrition.
Running short of these materials moments before their defeat was more of a sign rather than a cause of their collapse.
The empire held and controlled by Germany between 1940 and 1944 was more or less the area held by today's EU --- just as the empire that Japan held in those years was the same as what we call the South East Asia Economic Tigers.
These two areas then and now, along with America and the former USSR, were the powerhouses of the globe - in terms of people, industry,science.
Yet these two empires failed to either adequately feed their subjects or turn them into willing citizens, prepared to work hard and die hard for those empires.
Lack of food and lack of civic support worked together in an entangled way --- if the subject people had felt warmly towards Japanese and Germans ,they would have produced the food to fill their bellies and quiet their dislike.
Lack of Calories is just another way to say lack of Citizenship and vice versa.
The modernist rulers of these empires failed to treat Nature (or people they considered lessors/close to Nature) with the respect they deserved and then paid the price when their potential strong empires collapsed from within --from lack of supporters.
The Soviets also failed to feed their people and while they inspired the naive, the rest they had to drive into battle with guns at their heads.
Things weren't so dramatic in the American and British empires but even there relatively few people were willing to volunteering for infantry, eager to drive the Japanese and Nazis from their conquests.
People did not flock to the colors in a sort of moral crusade.
Instead, they saw its as a grimly necessary 'job' and plodded into battle led by generals equally cautious and uninspiring.
True, food was more or less adequate in these empires.
But the ruling people (and the subject peoples) of empires based on a mild form of racism were hardly going to go all out to defeat other empires that were also based on racism, now were they ?
In the end, it took six long , costly, years for a half dozen world-sized empires to defeat two relatively small empires --- hardly an inspiring record...
NAS tipped to run American AUSCHWITZ after Nazi conquest ???
Organized Science, if it knows nothing else (a claim easy to defend), sure knows how to sing for its supper.
That is why Scientism is our one and only God.
Organized Science knows just when to switch sides and to start sucking up to the newest powerful entities in town and it knows just who is powerless enough to safely kick in the teeth.
It also picks its opponents it chooses to publicly battle very carefully so that none of the resulting mud sticks to its priestly skirts.
The NAS choose not to criticize Raymond Loewy's ROCKETPORT vision at the New York's World Fair of 1939-1940----- and silence is assent.
The Rocketport was the most scientifically loony idea at a Fair replete with scientifically loony ideas.
The so called 'Rocket' , a small ocean liner in size, was actually a cannon projectile fired in New York and designed to land in Paris ------- somehow without the resulting enormous G-Forces mushing everybody inside the projectile into protoplasm.
(Humans might survive 200 Gs all over their body, if its only for a fraction of a second as in a car crash, but this voyage would impose at least 20,000 Gs for a fatally long time, even if we ignore the peak force of about 200,000 Gs at blast-off......)
Loewy got away with his loony tune idea because he claimed it came to him from studying scientific journals (rather than saying he saw it in a vision after praying to the Virgin Mary).
Whether the idea came from the Journal SCIENCE or MATTHEW 12 in the Bible, the idea was equally crazy.
But rest assured that the NAS would only have rushed forward to condemn it as scientifically invalid if the idea had come from their bete noires in the camp of the dreaded 'Religion'.
The All-American idea of applied negative Eugenics (can you say Auschwitz, boys and girls ?) was a much more damaging loony idea the NAS choose not to publicly attack - until it was far far too late and after eugenics had been already discredited by the march of events in Eastern Europe.
That is what I mean by Science's Bad Faith --- its unwillingness to attack anything as unscientific, no matter how loony or deadly, if doing so risks lowering the awesome respect ordinary people still have for those 'wonder-working wizards' of science.
In the end, it all comes down to "JOBS,JOBS,JOBS" as that famous scientist Brian Mulroney once observed ---- he also said "there is no whore like an old whore".
True, so true.....
That is why Scientism is our one and only God.
Organized Science knows just when to switch sides and to start sucking up to the newest powerful entities in town and it knows just who is powerless enough to safely kick in the teeth.
It also picks its opponents it chooses to publicly battle very carefully so that none of the resulting mud sticks to its priestly skirts.
The NAS choose not to criticize Raymond Loewy's ROCKETPORT vision at the New York's World Fair of 1939-1940----- and silence is assent.
The Rocketport was the most scientifically loony idea at a Fair replete with scientifically loony ideas.
The so called 'Rocket' , a small ocean liner in size, was actually a cannon projectile fired in New York and designed to land in Paris ------- somehow without the resulting enormous G-Forces mushing everybody inside the projectile into protoplasm.
(Humans might survive 200 Gs all over their body, if its only for a fraction of a second as in a car crash, but this voyage would impose at least 20,000 Gs for a fatally long time, even if we ignore the peak force of about 200,000 Gs at blast-off......)
Loewy got away with his loony tune idea because he claimed it came to him from studying scientific journals (rather than saying he saw it in a vision after praying to the Virgin Mary).
Whether the idea came from the Journal SCIENCE or MATTHEW 12 in the Bible, the idea was equally crazy.
But rest assured that the NAS would only have rushed forward to condemn it as scientifically invalid if the idea had come from their bete noires in the camp of the dreaded 'Religion'.
The All-American idea of applied negative Eugenics (can you say Auschwitz, boys and girls ?) was a much more damaging loony idea the NAS choose not to publicly attack - until it was far far too late and after eugenics had been already discredited by the march of events in Eastern Europe.
That is what I mean by Science's Bad Faith --- its unwillingness to attack anything as unscientific, no matter how loony or deadly, if doing so risks lowering the awesome respect ordinary people still have for those 'wonder-working wizards' of science.
In the end, it all comes down to "JOBS,JOBS,JOBS" as that famous scientist Brian Mulroney once observed ---- he also said "there is no whore like an old whore".
True, so true.....
Ironies abound: Dawson immediately BEFORE Penicillin was studying L-Form bacteria - that rare exception to penicillin's lethal charms ....
One of the very first people to study L-forms was Dr MARTIN HENRY DAWSON in 1939-1940.
Immediately afterwards, on October 16th 1940, he did something truly different.
He injected a young man (dying of 'incurable' subacute bacterial endocarditis) with the juice of some mold he brewed up.
The young man lived - becoming the first ever person to get a needleful of natural, systemic, penicillin.
What makes this so unusual is that L-forms are that rare form of bacteria that are IMMUNE to penicillin's effects.
Talk about an abrupt switch from MATTER to ANTI-MATTER !
Dawson paddled about in 'the quiet backwaters' of medical science in his detractors' eyes.
Most doctors thought then and still do think that L-Form bacteria are defective ,useless, lab curios.
Bacteria define themselves by their strong semi-rigid outer cell walls - the secret of their success as Life's most plentiful and longest living life form.
L-forms lack that wall and by rights shouldn't be alive or reproduce.
But they do - and their success implies that all bacteria have retained extremely old genes (perhaps the oldest genes on Earth) that lie dormant until (or when) they are attacked by antibiotics that destroy cell walls.
Because penicillin-type wall-dissolvers weren't invented by Man (only in his dreams) but rather by other bacteria about the same time that the very first bacteria emerged.
The ability to survive without either bacteria walls (or bacteria's binary fission genes) means that L-forms probably look like the very first life-forms that ever existed - perhaps from before even DNA was perfected.
Still think they're useless ???????????
In his day job Dawson helped society's chronically 'defective' people live better lives : in his spare time, he studied bacteria's chronically 'defective' life forms.
What he learned from the 'defective' bacteria's amazing will to live, he later applied towards not letting any of his human 'defectives' be written off to die, by the cruel ramp doctors of American War Medicine....
Home GROWN natural penicillin: one of WWII's few AGRICULTURAL successes ....
In the beginning, WWII talked big - promising to put a Gas Chamber and Crematorium on the Moon and a Chicken in Every Pot, but as usual it was all just talk.
In the end it couldn't even do the simplest of things, like taking the garbage out and getting all the kids fed and on to school on time.
Amidst the HIGH TECH disaster that was WWII, there was one LOW TECH (agricultural) success, a quiet triumph of courage, hope and chivalry:
Martin Henry Dawson's PEN "G" project was New York's LOW TECH counterpart to the much better known HIGH TECH Manhattan Project.
Only this time it was humans working with Nature, not against it ; an effort to save lives, not take them.
Dawson grew mold, not food.
Millions of the kids who owed their lives to his natural systemic penicillin would not have really needed it if they had adequate food.
Nevertheless he did his best, he did his bit - and above all he did it Nature's way, not Modernity's way.
When it came to making penicillin, his Natural approach batted One and Modernity's synthetic approach ended up batting Zero....
In the end it couldn't even do the simplest of things, like taking the garbage out and getting all the kids fed and on to school on time.
Amidst the HIGH TECH disaster that was WWII, there was one LOW TECH (agricultural) success, a quiet triumph of courage, hope and chivalry:
Martin Henry Dawson's PEN "G" project was New York's LOW TECH counterpart to the much better known HIGH TECH Manhattan Project.
Only this time it was humans working with Nature, not against it ; an effort to save lives, not take them.
Dawson grew mold, not food.
Millions of the kids who owed their lives to his natural systemic penicillin would not have really needed it if they had adequate food.
Nevertheless he did his best, he did his bit - and above all he did it Nature's way, not Modernity's way.
When it came to making penicillin, his Natural approach batted One and Modernity's synthetic approach ended up batting Zero....
No shots exchanged, no fisticuffs,never even met : The WWII clash of Szilard and Dawson.
((This was originally posted to my discontinued blog, "THE CONTINUING STORY OF THE LITTLE BOY AND THE BABY GIRL", on July 15th 2011. The blog's subtitle, equally long-winded, was : . because WWII, PHYSICALLY, may be over, but mentally and intellectually the clash continues ----- with the fate of humanity on this planet hanging in the balance.))
WWII is usually thought of as the clash of arms and the clash of pre-existing (unalterable) values : Allied GOOD versus Axis EVIL.
But it really was the clash and exchange of mutable ideas during the course of 1939-1945 - everyone's ideas , even Hitler's, were altered over the course of those six years of war.
I am most interested in the deepest, the most fundamental of those opposing ideas, not merely the surface 'political' differences --- and I find them most clearly expressed in the words and actions of two immigrant academics on the campus of wartime Columbia University in Manhattan.
They knew of each other's existence, if only through newspaper stories and gossip, but they never seemed to have met, let alone engaged in polemics together.
If pushed, they might well have thought of each other as like- minded ; fellow travelers more than intellectual opponents.
But the wartime projects they set in motion, I believe, spelled out what WWII was all about clearer than anything else that so consumes the war's historians.
Their clash of worldviews was never seen as resolved and so WWII continues today; carrying on ,disguised, in bloody regional wars and in the clash of opposing value systems in nations nominally at peace.
But in the realm of Science, their clash was resolved - one side clearly lost the scientific battle but nevertheless went on to win the propaganda war and continues to do so.
The fate of humanity hangs on us admitting that WWII was, above all else, a clash of scientific theories and that based on the evidence, one side was clearly proven wrong.
Despite this, this is the type of science, the losing side, the incorrect side, is still taught in public schools and undergraduate classes and is still - literally - killing this planet....
WWII is usually thought of as the clash of arms and the clash of pre-existing (unalterable) values : Allied GOOD versus Axis EVIL.
But it really was the clash and exchange of mutable ideas during the course of 1939-1945 - everyone's ideas , even Hitler's, were altered over the course of those six years of war.
I am most interested in the deepest, the most fundamental of those opposing ideas, not merely the surface 'political' differences --- and I find them most clearly expressed in the words and actions of two immigrant academics on the campus of wartime Columbia University in Manhattan.
They knew of each other's existence, if only through newspaper stories and gossip, but they never seemed to have met, let alone engaged in polemics together.
If pushed, they might well have thought of each other as like- minded ; fellow travelers more than intellectual opponents.
But the wartime projects they set in motion, I believe, spelled out what WWII was all about clearer than anything else that so consumes the war's historians.
Their clash of worldviews was never seen as resolved and so WWII continues today; carrying on ,disguised, in bloody regional wars and in the clash of opposing value systems in nations nominally at peace.
But in the realm of Science, their clash was resolved - one side clearly lost the scientific battle but nevertheless went on to win the propaganda war and continues to do so.
The fate of humanity hangs on us admitting that WWII was, above all else, a clash of scientific theories and that based on the evidence, one side was clearly proven wrong.
Despite this, this is the type of science, the losing side, the incorrect side, is still taught in public schools and undergraduate classes and is still - literally - killing this planet....
PEN ,"G" Floor, Oct 16 1940
The very first natural systemic penicillin ever made came out of a small lab in the Physicians & Surgeons Medical School (P & S) Building of Columbia University in Upper Harlem, New York.
In just five weeks, start to finish, it was ready to be injected by team leader Dr Martin Henry Dawson into a young man named Charlie Aronson on October 16 1940.
It was the first ever day of America's peacetime Selective Service (a system still with us 75 years later).
A day for America to separate (and celebrate) its 1A men and to dismiss and ignore its 4F men - like Charlie.
For Dawson, it was 25 years to the day when the news of the execution of nurse Edith Cavell first reached North America - 25 years to the day when he, along with tens of thousands of others world wide, resolved to join up to fight the wicked Huns who killed Cavell.
In Dawson's case, he first joined up as a medical orderly - so today marked his 25th year in the world of medicine.
Despite Charlie being diagnosed with a then invariably fatal disease called SBE , the semi-purified penicillin didn't seem to hurt Charlie at all.
Instead - and unexpectedly - he survived and became the presumably ever-grateful PATIENT ONE of the Antibiotics Revolution.
The penicillin for the very first life-saving use of the 75 year old gold standard of antibiotics (injectable penicillin) was labelled PEN "G".
This was not because "G" stands for G-old Standard, or because the original penicillin was a G-olden Yellow in color or because "G" denotes Benzyl (injectable) Penicillin or because some drug company thought PEN "G" would make a catchy brand name for the horsey set.
All these things are true - completely true --- but they are all pretty latecomers to this particular party.
That very first life-saving penicillin was called PEN "G" for one very simple reason: the labs of Dr Dawson and his co-workers on his tiny team ( Karl Meyer ,Gladys Hobby and Eleanor Chaffee) were on Floor"G" of that building.
Their doubting colleagues at P&S Columbia regarded this 'pen.. (what ever) stuff' as something pretty crackpotty ; something being brewed up by that free spirit Dawson and his motley crew back in the remote North West corner of Floor "G" .
Being the first ever in the world - hell in the entire universe - to use systemic natural penicillin to save lives gives Dawson's team bragging rights to call their homebrew penicillin whatever they wanted to:
Their brew was penicillin from "G" Floor of P & S : and hence familiarly know as PEN "G" , for short...
PEN ,"G" Floor, Oct 16th 1940
The very first natural systemic penicillin ever made came out of a small lab in the Physicians & Surgeons Medical School (P & S) Building of Columbia University in Upper Harlem, New York.
In just five weeks, start to finish, it was ready to be injected by team leader Dr Martin Henry Dawson into a young man named Charlie Aronson on October 16 1940.
It was the first ever day of America's peacetime Selective Service (a system still with us 75 years later).
A day for America to separate (and celebrate) its 1A men and to dismiss and ignore its 4F men - like Charlie.
For Dawson, it was 25 years to the day when the news of the execution of nurse Edith Cavell first reached North America - 25 years to the day when he, along with tens of thousands of others world wide, resolved to join up to fight the wicked Huns who killed Cavell.
In Dawson's case, he first joined up as a medical orderly - so today marked his 25th year in the world of medicine.
Despite Charlie being diagnosed with a then invariably fatal disease called SBE , the semi-purified penicillin didn't seem to hurt Charlie at all.
Instead - and unexpectedly - he survived and became the presumably ever-grateful PATIENT ONE of the Antibiotics Revolution.
The penicillin for the very first life-saving use of the 75 year old gold standard of antibiotics (injectable penicillin) was labelled PEN "G".
This was not because "G" stands for G-old Standard, or because the original penicillin was a G-olden Yellow in color or because "G" denotes Benzyl (injectable) Penicillin or because some drug company thought PEN "G" would make a catchy brand name for the horsey set.
All these things are true - completely true --- but they are all pretty latecomers to this particular party.
That very first life-saving penicillin was called PEN "G" for one very simple reason: the labs of Dr Dawson and his co-workers on his tiny team ( Karl Meyer ,Gladys Hobby and Eleanor Chaffee) were on Floor"G" of that building.
Their doubting colleagues at P&S Columbia regarded this 'pen.. (what ever) stuff' as something pretty crackpotty ; something being brewed up by that free spirit Dawson and his motley crew back in the remote North West corner of Floor "G" .
Being the first ever in the world - hell in the entire universe - to use systemic natural penicillin to save lives gives Dawson's team bragging rights to call their homebrew penicillin whatever they wanted to:
Their brew was penicillin from "G" Floor of P & S : and hence familiarly know as PEN "G" , for short...
Thumbing their nose at MODERNITY.....
During WWII (the very apogee of MODERNITY) in New York City (the very epicenter of Modernity) , a dying doctor and his few square feet of Mother Nature quietly thumbed their nose at MODERNITY...
.... and changed our whole world, for the better, for ever.
Homegrown, natural , systemic penicillin is Dr Martin Henry Dawson's practical legacy, leading on from his insights into the commensal nature of Life that is his scientific legacy.
That same university on Manhattan Island ( Columbia) that Dawson worked at all during those war years, was also home to the Manhattan Project and the Atomic Bomb.
Columbia University thus was home to the Twentieth Century's biggest high tech disaster and its smallest low tech triumph : home to the stories of the Little Boy Bomb and the Baby Girl Patty Malone: the nadir and the apogee of Twentieth Century Humanity.
Sometimes Fact truly is stranger than Fiction ever could be...
.... and changed our whole world, for the better, for ever.
Homegrown, natural , systemic penicillin is Dr Martin Henry Dawson's practical legacy, leading on from his insights into the commensal nature of Life that is his scientific legacy.
That same university on Manhattan Island ( Columbia) that Dawson worked at all during those war years, was also home to the Manhattan Project and the Atomic Bomb.
Columbia University thus was home to the Twentieth Century's biggest high tech disaster and its smallest low tech triumph : home to the stories of the Little Boy Bomb and the Baby Girl Patty Malone: the nadir and the apogee of Twentieth Century Humanity.
Sometimes Fact truly is stranger than Fiction ever could be...
Yes , WWII was a HIGH TECH triumph - it was just LOW TECH that it couldn't handle...
The HIGH TECH successes of WWII ?
Where do we begin?
The A-Bomb of course, along with the B-29 intercontinental heavy bomber and the Norden Bombsight. The V-2 sub-orbital ballistic missile, against which there was ( and is) no defense, suitable to be upgraded with the newer, smaller, atomic bombs for added horror.
That American inter-war wonder of the modern age, the prison gas chamber, adapted to large scale use at Auschwitz , where when combined together with the best practices in computerized database tracking, worked to ensure that mass murders were no longer undocumented, undisciplined, melees.
The Hunger Plan - the plan to double the agriculture output of a million square kilometres of Eastern Europe and Russia.
This to be achieved by killing the existing 50 million residents and their useless mouths (and hands and brains).
They would be replaced by a hundred thousand big tractors powered by petroleum from the Caucasus and controlled by skilled Aryan operators.
Scientific, Mechanical, Agriculture, done right.
LOW TECH failures - well yes, a few, but hardly worth mentioning in the standard triumphant accounts of the war.
For example, the Americans could put a Bomb on Hiroshima (and ultimately a Man on the Moon), but couldn't seem to put a waterproof boot on its lowly MOS 745s (infantry rifleman) in wet, cold, Italy in the late summer of 1943.
Trenchfoot has low tech solutions but Scientific America couldn't find them - or more likely, deemed them too boringly low tech to assign its best talents toward.
LOW TECH failure #1, #2, #3,#4 ad infinitum ?
The failure of human society to at the very least feed everybody a basic diet.
Now don't start by blaming Mother Nature for WWII's famine deaths.
Compared to say 1936 or 1946, the war years were ones without dramatic floods or droughts --- we should have expected surpluses not mass famine.
Let me repeat -- more people died of hunger and hunger diseases as a result of WWII, than died in combat or by execution by gas or gun.
Nature , in those war years, stood ready to yield up her bounty to not just feed the world but make it fat.
Modernity failed to cultivate that potential bounty and then further failed to equitably distribute what food it did produce.
Even Modernity can feed enough of the world , to stave off mass famine, in peacetime.
But in wartime, when it was given its head to do much better, it instead SNAFU-ed up big time.
Postmodernity was birthed in the mass famine of 1945-1946.
A philosophy that couldn't even handle the most basic, most essential task that Humanity requires - Food - is not worthy of our respect or our loyalty.
When the global environmental meltdown goes Postal, do you really want Modernity's zealots to be put back in the driver's seat?
Wasn't one WWII, two WWIIs too many ???????
Where do we begin?
The A-Bomb of course, along with the B-29 intercontinental heavy bomber and the Norden Bombsight. The V-2 sub-orbital ballistic missile, against which there was ( and is) no defense, suitable to be upgraded with the newer, smaller, atomic bombs for added horror.
That American inter-war wonder of the modern age, the prison gas chamber, adapted to large scale use at Auschwitz , where when combined together with the best practices in computerized database tracking, worked to ensure that mass murders were no longer undocumented, undisciplined, melees.
The Hunger Plan - the plan to double the agriculture output of a million square kilometres of Eastern Europe and Russia.
This to be achieved by killing the existing 50 million residents and their useless mouths (and hands and brains).
They would be replaced by a hundred thousand big tractors powered by petroleum from the Caucasus and controlled by skilled Aryan operators.
Scientific, Mechanical, Agriculture, done right.
LOW TECH failures - well yes, a few, but hardly worth mentioning in the standard triumphant accounts of the war.
For example, the Americans could put a Bomb on Hiroshima (and ultimately a Man on the Moon), but couldn't seem to put a waterproof boot on its lowly MOS 745s (infantry rifleman) in wet, cold, Italy in the late summer of 1943.
Trenchfoot has low tech solutions but Scientific America couldn't find them - or more likely, deemed them too boringly low tech to assign its best talents toward.
LOW TECH failure #1, #2, #3,#4 ad infinitum ?
The failure of human society to at the very least feed everybody a basic diet.
Now don't start by blaming Mother Nature for WWII's famine deaths.
Compared to say 1936 or 1946, the war years were ones without dramatic floods or droughts --- we should have expected surpluses not mass famine.
Let me repeat -- more people died of hunger and hunger diseases as a result of WWII, than died in combat or by execution by gas or gun.
Nature , in those war years, stood ready to yield up her bounty to not just feed the world but make it fat.
Modernity failed to cultivate that potential bounty and then further failed to equitably distribute what food it did produce.
Even Modernity can feed enough of the world , to stave off mass famine, in peacetime.
But in wartime, when it was given its head to do much better, it instead SNAFU-ed up big time.
Postmodernity was birthed in the mass famine of 1945-1946.
A philosophy that couldn't even handle the most basic, most essential task that Humanity requires - Food - is not worthy of our respect or our loyalty.
When the global environmental meltdown goes Postal, do you really want Modernity's zealots to be put back in the driver's seat?
Wasn't one WWII, two WWIIs too many ???????
Sunday, March 11, 2012
WWII : 20th Century Dress Rehearsal for a 21st Century Global Meltdown....
On all sides, WWII (Modernity's War) was exalted to be the planned Triumph of Man's Will over the Ways of Nature.
But it hardly turned out that way did it?
There is little consensus on what exactly PostModernism is or is not , but all observers agree that VJ Day 1945 marked the beginnings of PostModernity ---- and the death throes of unreconstructed Modernity.
Actually I should say that is the academic understanding of 1945's consequences (few would disagree that Modernity finds little traction on your average university campus these days !)
But things are quite different down here at Ground Zero : there is little evidence that the Chambers of Commerce and the conservative Political Parties have ever heard about PostModernity's triumph among the thinking class.
For here at Ground Zero, practice is dominated by those who do (and deny) , not by those who think.
Man's Will is still expected to overcome, in the best 1930s style, any limits Nature may impose on Life.
Its not that Republicans and corporate CEOs totally deny there are any problems with our relations with Nature - far from it.
It is just that they steadfastly deny these problems - and others - can not be solved in time by Man's mental ingenuity, a little hard work and some cash.
World War Two should remind us that while Republicans,Soviets, Nazis and CEOs can govern more or less successfully in peacetime, war has a way of revealing the flaws in Modernity's Platonic certitudes....
But it hardly turned out that way did it?
There is little consensus on what exactly PostModernism is or is not , but all observers agree that VJ Day 1945 marked the beginnings of PostModernity ---- and the death throes of unreconstructed Modernity.
Actually I should say that is the academic understanding of 1945's consequences (few would disagree that Modernity finds little traction on your average university campus these days !)
But things are quite different down here at Ground Zero : there is little evidence that the Chambers of Commerce and the conservative Political Parties have ever heard about PostModernity's triumph among the thinking class.
For here at Ground Zero, practice is dominated by those who do (and deny) , not by those who think.
Man's Will is still expected to overcome, in the best 1930s style, any limits Nature may impose on Life.
Its not that Republicans and corporate CEOs totally deny there are any problems with our relations with Nature - far from it.
It is just that they steadfastly deny these problems - and others - can not be solved in time by Man's mental ingenuity, a little hard work and some cash.
World War Two should remind us that while Republicans,Soviets, Nazis and CEOs can govern more or less successfully in peacetime, war has a way of revealing the flaws in Modernity's Platonic certitudes....
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
1845-1945 : SECOND Industrial Revolution or the SECOND Fall of Man ?
Maybe a bit of both ?
The-People-Of-The-Second-Fall claim they have repudiated Original Sin and that as a result, anything that God can do, they can do too - only better.
As Rickey Santorum, the prelate of The Church of the Deniers , reminds us :
Sort of like what God Himself would have done, if only he was as smart as us....
The-People-Of-The-Second-Fall claim they have repudiated Original Sin and that as a result, anything that God can do, they can do too - only better.
As Rickey Santorum, the prelate of The Church of the Deniers , reminds us :
"We are the intelligent beings that know how to manage things and through that course of science and discovery if we can be better stewards of this environment, then we should not let the vagaries of nature destroy what we have helped create."When God's Natural World makes mistakes, its our job to save Nature from itself and fix things up.
Sort of like what God Himself would have done, if only he was as smart as us....
Nov 1938-Nov 1945 :The SEVEN YEARS of Silence
In mid-November 1938, all the reading world heard about KRISTALNACHT and the organized Nazi attacks against all Jewish people they could get their hands on at the time.
It wasn't till exactly seven long years later,
that all the reading world again learned about fresh Nazi attacks against Jews.
Mid-November 1945 marked the beginning of the most famous of the Nuremberg trials.
Only this time, the Jews the Nazis could get their hands on numbered nine million ,not ninety thousand , and the Nazis were hardly restrained by world public opinion - though as it turned out, they had no fears on that account.
Amazingly,death camps like Treblinka had started being discovered a good year before the Nuremberg Trials.
However the world hadn't immediately realized that they were a new low in global cruelty - camps designed for death (and death only) .
Rather they were seen as particularly brutal versions of the long familiar 1930s Concentration Camps seen in Germany proper.
(Basically imprisonment-at-hard-labour camps.)
In addition, Jews were seen at first as just one of dozens of ethnic groups killed in these camps - rather than being these camps' prime focus and their largest number of victims - in absolute numbers and ,above all, in relative terms.
November 1945 changed all that as the world heard about the Six Million Dead for the first time.
This because while reports about the millions of Jews, Poles and Russians being killed during the war were also reported during the war, they were not featured in any media - this knowledge was public but not popular, in my special sense of those terms.
WWII has been given many labels : a very damning one is "The SEVEN YEARS of Silence" ...
It wasn't till exactly seven long years later,
that all the reading world again learned about fresh Nazi attacks against Jews.
Mid-November 1945 marked the beginning of the most famous of the Nuremberg trials.
Only this time, the Jews the Nazis could get their hands on numbered nine million ,not ninety thousand , and the Nazis were hardly restrained by world public opinion - though as it turned out, they had no fears on that account.
Amazingly,death camps like Treblinka had started being discovered a good year before the Nuremberg Trials.
However the world hadn't immediately realized that they were a new low in global cruelty - camps designed for death (and death only) .
Rather they were seen as particularly brutal versions of the long familiar 1930s Concentration Camps seen in Germany proper.
(Basically imprisonment-at-hard-labour camps.)
In addition, Jews were seen at first as just one of dozens of ethnic groups killed in these camps - rather than being these camps' prime focus and their largest number of victims - in absolute numbers and ,above all, in relative terms.
November 1945 changed all that as the world heard about the Six Million Dead for the first time.
This because while reports about the millions of Jews, Poles and Russians being killed during the war were also reported during the war, they were not featured in any media - this knowledge was public but not popular, in my special sense of those terms.
WWII has been given many labels : a very damning one is "The SEVEN YEARS of Silence" ...
The heart-less HEARTLAND
You gotta admire their consistency:
1940 Isolationists
1942 Polish Holocaust Deniers
2012 Environmental Crisis Deniers...
1940 Isolationists
1942 Polish Holocaust Deniers
2012 Environmental Crisis Deniers...
Crisis-Deniers say THEY won WWII, but I deny that...
It is clear: whoever wins "The War over the Interpretation of World War Two" also wins "The Crisis-Denier War" .
That Battle of Interpretation is over just who won and just who lost WWII (and won or lost it how) .
The truth is nobody won WWII, at least no human society won WWII.
At best, perhaps, Mother Nature and her human friends won WWII - at least won the intellectual battle part of that war.
If we are honest and compare the final results for human planners against their initial expectations, we must agree 1945 was a crushing defeat for planners on all sides of the war.
But the "MORDER SIND UNTER UNS" are still here, still denying.
When it comes to denying Holocausts, why stop at just one?
They might as well admit it : they're addicted to denial.
Deny, Deny, Deny.
"Hear no evil, see no evil, above all, smell no evil: deny, deny, deny."
They see no crisis, only successes.
They get away with it, at least among older people, because they claim the MYTH of WWII backs their position.
'Modernist Science found the solutions then and it will do so again ; we just need a few more Manhattan Projects.'
The WWII fact is that WWII science, modernist science, "almost lost Detroit"; the WWII myth is that modernist science saved it.
Chutzpah indeed is modernist science claiming it saved Detroit, when in fact, "we almost lost Detroit" .
The legend of WWII is that "Allied Science beat Axis Soldiers".
"They had the better soldiers but we had the better scientists."
"Modernist Science rescuing the civilized world from Atavistic Violent Warfare."
But Scientism, instead of claiming credit for ending WWII, should accept the bulk of the blame for starting it.
Hitler/Stalin/Tojo were bog-ordinary criminal scum floating upon an extraordinary ocean of evil unleashed by the relentless logic of Modernity and the Enlightenment.
They seized the opportunity to do wrong on a global scale unseen before - but who provided the opportunity ?
Now modernist science, bloodied but still unbowed, is denying that Human actions are destroying this planet in a million different ways - death by a million strokes.
They modestly claim they're actually saving Nature, saving it from the mistakes it has made (!)
I believe the best way to halt the Environmental Crisis is to first confront the myths over WWII - an event that began over 80 years ago and ,at first glance, seems to have little to do with today's energy and pollution problems.
I hope to prove that view wrong: that the first great global environmental, food and energy crisis happened inside WWII, almost unnoticed by anyone but the hundreds of millions of ordinary people who suffered through it .
Re-examining the global environmental,food and energy crisis of the 1940s might serve both as a warning and give us some prevention clues as to how best to deal with a similar global crisis in the 2040s.
Let us , in this way , work to extract what little good we can from that horrible, horrible war...
That Battle of Interpretation is over just who won and just who lost WWII (and won or lost it how) .
The truth is nobody won WWII, at least no human society won WWII.
At best, perhaps, Mother Nature and her human friends won WWII - at least won the intellectual battle part of that war.
If we are honest and compare the final results for human planners against their initial expectations, we must agree 1945 was a crushing defeat for planners on all sides of the war.
But the "MORDER SIND UNTER UNS" are still here, still denying.
When it comes to denying Holocausts, why stop at just one?
They might as well admit it : they're addicted to denial.
Deny, Deny, Deny.
"Hear no evil, see no evil, above all, smell no evil: deny, deny, deny."
They see no crisis, only successes.
They get away with it, at least among older people, because they claim the MYTH of WWII backs their position.
'Modernist Science found the solutions then and it will do so again ; we just need a few more Manhattan Projects.'
The WWII fact is that WWII science, modernist science, "almost lost Detroit"; the WWII myth is that modernist science saved it.
Chutzpah indeed is modernist science claiming it saved Detroit, when in fact, "we almost lost Detroit" .
The legend of WWII is that "Allied Science beat Axis Soldiers".
"They had the better soldiers but we had the better scientists."
"Modernist Science rescuing the civilized world from Atavistic Violent Warfare."
But Scientism, instead of claiming credit for ending WWII, should accept the bulk of the blame for starting it.
Hitler/Stalin/Tojo were bog-ordinary criminal scum floating upon an extraordinary ocean of evil unleashed by the relentless logic of Modernity and the Enlightenment.
They seized the opportunity to do wrong on a global scale unseen before - but who provided the opportunity ?
Now modernist science, bloodied but still unbowed, is denying that Human actions are destroying this planet in a million different ways - death by a million strokes.
They modestly claim they're actually saving Nature, saving it from the mistakes it has made (!)
I believe the best way to halt the Environmental Crisis is to first confront the myths over WWII - an event that began over 80 years ago and ,at first glance, seems to have little to do with today's energy and pollution problems.
I hope to prove that view wrong: that the first great global environmental, food and energy crisis happened inside WWII, almost unnoticed by anyone but the hundreds of millions of ordinary people who suffered through it .
Re-examining the global environmental,food and energy crisis of the 1940s might serve both as a warning and give us some prevention clues as to how best to deal with a similar global crisis in the 2040s.
Let us , in this way , work to extract what little good we can from that horrible, horrible war...
Monday, March 5, 2012
"POLISH HORSES HAUL GERMAN TANKS" - now there's fact I'd like to see become legend...
As a respite from all those frequently republished photographs from September 1939 of German tanks romping it up over Polish Cavalry units, it would be nice just one time to see some photographs from
Poland taken at the exact opposite end of the war - April 1945.
By this point the Germans were making more, and better, tanks than they had ever done previously - but to what end ?
They were out of tank fuel.
So they demanded Polish farmers cover the tank transporters with hay and hitch them up to their teams of horses and oxen.
Then slowly, very slowly, the panzers would be moved up to the west bank of the Vistula River, to await the final Russian offensive across the river from the east bank and straight into Berlin.
The tanks would be buried, hull down , at the bottom back side of slight hills , their turrets pointed at the most likely crossing points.
The very opposition of Lightning War or Blitzkreig.
Now there was no more fuel dumps, but the Polish horses did pause frequently, for a leisurely
refueling of grass and and equally leisurely dump of ( ooops ! - can't say more - this is a family blog !)
For once, the Germans couldn't simply shoot the Poles, at least not the Polish horses, in an effort to make them move faster.
At long last, war for the Germans Overmen moved at the speed of Nature, not Man.
Now I call that poetic - and I think it is worth a photo.
Funny those German amateur photo snappers, usually so omnipresent at scenes of martial triumph or whenever partisan children are being hung, seem not to have churned up any photos of tanks disguised as hay rides plodding down the road to Gotterdammerung at the speed of ox....
Poland taken at the exact opposite end of the war - April 1945.
By this point the Germans were making more, and better, tanks than they had ever done previously - but to what end ?
They were out of tank fuel.
So they demanded Polish farmers cover the tank transporters with hay and hitch them up to their teams of horses and oxen.
Then slowly, very slowly, the panzers would be moved up to the west bank of the Vistula River, to await the final Russian offensive across the river from the east bank and straight into Berlin.
The tanks would be buried, hull down , at the bottom back side of slight hills , their turrets pointed at the most likely crossing points.
The very opposition of Lightning War or Blitzkreig.
Now there was no more fuel dumps, but the Polish horses did pause frequently, for a leisurely
refueling of grass and and equally leisurely dump of ( ooops ! - can't say more - this is a family blog !)
For once, the Germans couldn't simply shoot the Poles, at least not the Polish horses, in an effort to make them move faster.
At long last, war for the Germans Overmen moved at the speed of Nature, not Man.
Now I call that poetic - and I think it is worth a photo.
Funny those German amateur photo snappers, usually so omnipresent at scenes of martial triumph or whenever partisan children are being hung, seem not to have churned up any photos of tanks disguised as hay rides plodding down the road to Gotterdammerung at the speed of ox....
Where are the panzer Ones that Won the east, the west, the north, the south ?
Curious, is it not , all those thinly veiled paeans by present-day Allied authors written to the Nazi Panzer Corps that are illustrated on their covers by Panzer Tiger and Panther tanks.
I mean those are the tanks the Nazis produced when they were losing all the battles.
Why not show the images of the blitzkreig-era tanks that Germany actually used to conquer Poland, France, the Balkans and Norway in a blink of an eye ?
You know, all those dinky looking Panzers I and IIs.
The 5 tonne Panzer I was a little heavier than George Foreman (but not as tall) and packed almost as hard a punch - two light machine guns.
Steel plating about a 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick was its only armour - yes it could stop a bullet, if it was travelling in from a great distance, but not as well as today's infantryman's body armour.
Holy smoking wacky-tobacky, Batman !
One begins to see how these awkward FACTS would spoil the LEGEND - but let us by all means continue to 'print the legend' .
Truth is, if the September 1939 photographs weren't labelled and national markings are not visible, you'd have a heck of a time telling the difference between the nominally fully-mechanized German panzer column and a column of the nominally horse-oriented Polish Cavalry.
About 1/3 of the total Nazi tank corps was lost during the brief victorious Polish campaign - about 1/2 of those permanently.
At any one time 1/2 of all of Germany's tanks were out of action during the Polish campaign - sometimes due to Polish anti-tanks guns or rifles , but mostly due to mechanical problems - this despite a campaign conducted over a very short time period, over very short distances, and in excellent weather....things don't get much more cushy in peacetime 'war games' .
But the myth that the Allied media (supposedly *Allies of the Poles by the way) touted at least as much as the Nazi media, right from the start of WWII , was of mechanized columns of 20th century German Panzers inevitably crushing the hapless 19th century Polish Horse Cavalry.
Modernist Man had a Legend ("GERMAN TANKS MAUL POLISH HORSES") already formed in his rationalistic mind and he wasn't going to be bothered by mere facts.
My job is to take Modernist Man (or his son and grandson) by the scruff of his neck and rub his nose into the unpleasant facts until he squeals....
* With Allies like that, what Pole needs enemies ?
I mean those are the tanks the Nazis produced when they were losing all the battles.
Why not show the images of the blitzkreig-era tanks that Germany actually used to conquer Poland, France, the Balkans and Norway in a blink of an eye ?
You know, all those dinky looking Panzers I and IIs.
The 5 tonne Panzer I was a little heavier than George Foreman (but not as tall) and packed almost as hard a punch - two light machine guns.
Steel plating about a 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick was its only armour - yes it could stop a bullet, if it was travelling in from a great distance, but not as well as today's infantryman's body armour.
Holy smoking wacky-tobacky, Batman !
One begins to see how these awkward FACTS would spoil the LEGEND - but let us by all means continue to 'print the legend' .
Truth is, if the September 1939 photographs weren't labelled and national markings are not visible, you'd have a heck of a time telling the difference between the nominally fully-mechanized German panzer column and a column of the nominally horse-oriented Polish Cavalry.
About 1/3 of the total Nazi tank corps was lost during the brief victorious Polish campaign - about 1/2 of those permanently.
At any one time 1/2 of all of Germany's tanks were out of action during the Polish campaign - sometimes due to Polish anti-tanks guns or rifles , but mostly due to mechanical problems - this despite a campaign conducted over a very short time period, over very short distances, and in excellent weather....things don't get much more cushy in peacetime 'war games' .
But the myth that the Allied media (supposedly *Allies of the Poles by the way) touted at least as much as the Nazi media, right from the start of WWII , was of mechanized columns of 20th century German Panzers inevitably crushing the hapless 19th century Polish Horse Cavalry.
Modernist Man had a Legend ("GERMAN TANKS MAUL POLISH HORSES") already formed in his rationalistic mind and he wasn't going to be bothered by mere facts.
My job is to take Modernist Man (or his son and grandson) by the scruff of his neck and rub his nose into the unpleasant facts until he squeals....
* With Allies like that, what Pole needs enemies ?
Not going to re-"print the legend" ....
'Does the World really need another history of WWII' , I hear you ask.
' Another History of WWII ? ' : I haven't seen many.
Rather I mainly see the never-ending printing and re-printing of the Legend as Fact....
' Another History of WWII ? ' : I haven't seen many.
Rather I mainly see the never-ending printing and re-printing of the Legend as Fact....
Tojo/Hitler/Stalin : ganger-bangers 'wasting people' in the ultimate 'hood ...
Say what you will about Gangsta Rappers or the Mafia but you gotta admit they just totally, totally, lack ambition.
After all, they only aspire to waste a few dozen victims over their lifetimes.
But each of the three ganger-bangers dictators of the 1933 to 1953 period aimed much higher.
Each individually 'wasted' tens of millions of people during their reigns.
These were those millions upon millions of people they neither killed during combat nor set out to deliberately and directly murder by gun, rope or needle.
These were all the people that these three dictators figured they could afford to kill off fairly quickly by starvation, neglect and overwork , because the value of their continuing physical labour and brainpower was judged less valuable than the minimal cost of providing them a little more food and care.
Against the minimal numbers of low level people these three killers judged were actually needed in a Mechanical Age and a Mechanical War , there seemed lots more expendable human hands still pouring out the pipeline.
But, in fact, all three lost their wars ( including Stalin) because of their desperate shortages of 'manpower'(ie people) actually needed to successfully impose their will upon Mother Nature and upon other nations.
Forget their millions of deliberate murders - these three spendthrifts 'wasted' more lives than they murdered : even if they had never murdered one soul during their reigns, their Crimes Against Humanity would still make the stones cry out....
After all, they only aspire to waste a few dozen victims over their lifetimes.
But each of the three ganger-bangers dictators of the 1933 to 1953 period aimed much higher.
Each individually 'wasted' tens of millions of people during their reigns.
These were those millions upon millions of people they neither killed during combat nor set out to deliberately and directly murder by gun, rope or needle.
These were all the people that these three dictators figured they could afford to kill off fairly quickly by starvation, neglect and overwork , because the value of their continuing physical labour and brainpower was judged less valuable than the minimal cost of providing them a little more food and care.
Against the minimal numbers of low level people these three killers judged were actually needed in a Mechanical Age and a Mechanical War , there seemed lots more expendable human hands still pouring out the pipeline.
But, in fact, all three lost their wars ( including Stalin) because of their desperate shortages of 'manpower'(ie people) actually needed to successfully impose their will upon Mother Nature and upon other nations.
Forget their millions of deliberate murders - these three spendthrifts 'wasted' more lives than they murdered : even if they had never murdered one soul during their reigns, their Crimes Against Humanity would still make the stones cry out....
Can our world, particularly our world at war, get along without natural resources (such as most people) - substituting pure mental ingenuity instead?
Which is to ask, " was the war of 1939-1945 better labelled 'SOLOW'S WAR' ?"
Fundamentally, the leading lights of the Allies , as well as those of the Axis , would have agreed.
(As would the elites of most of the Neutrals, if they had been asked to think about it).
They all thought that, in the end, human mental MINDpower could surmount anything MATERIAL that Mother Nature could throw at them : be it a feast of bad weather or a famine of natural rubber.
Now nobody started an aggressive war (or conducted a defensive war) between 1939 and 1945 because of the economic theories of Robert Solow.
He was only 15 when the war began and he didn't utter his immortal quote that:
Besides as which, the theory hardly originated with Professor Solow --- it would be far, far better to lay credit where credit is due , at the feet of English Chemist John Dalton and his multitude of disciples in all the scientific and quasi-scientific disciplines.
But Solow is the one who has made the concept famous in contemporary times and who can say whether Dalton might have changed his views, in the lighter of newer scientific knowledge, if he had lived that long.
Robert Solow is still alive, has never fundamentally denounced this claim and so let him wear it.
Solow and Dalton's theory is basically a re-statement of The Good News Law (the First law of Thermodynamics) without the awkwardness of The Bad News Law (the Second Law of Thermodynamics) raining on the parade.
One could call The First Law of Thermodynamics the apogee of human hubris, just as the Second law of Thermodynamics is its nadir.
But haven't I already used that line to describe WWII ?
And your point being ?
Fundamentally, the leading lights of the Allies , as well as those of the Axis , would have agreed.
(As would the elites of most of the Neutrals, if they had been asked to think about it).
They all thought that, in the end, human mental MINDpower could surmount anything MATERIAL that Mother Nature could throw at them : be it a feast of bad weather or a famine of natural rubber.
Now nobody started an aggressive war (or conducted a defensive war) between 1939 and 1945 because of the economic theories of Robert Solow.
He was only 15 when the war began and he didn't utter his immortal quote that:
"If it is very easy to substitute other factors for natural resources, then there is, in principle, no problem. The world can, in effect, get along without natural resources.
("The Economics of Resources or the Resources of Economics.") Robert M. Solow. The American Economic Review, Vol. 64until 1974, 35 years later.
Besides as which, the theory hardly originated with Professor Solow --- it would be far, far better to lay credit where credit is due , at the feet of English Chemist John Dalton and his multitude of disciples in all the scientific and quasi-scientific disciplines.
But Solow is the one who has made the concept famous in contemporary times and who can say whether Dalton might have changed his views, in the lighter of newer scientific knowledge, if he had lived that long.
Robert Solow is still alive, has never fundamentally denounced this claim and so let him wear it.
Solow and Dalton's theory is basically a re-statement of The Good News Law (the First law of Thermodynamics) without the awkwardness of The Bad News Law (the Second Law of Thermodynamics) raining on the parade.
One could call The First Law of Thermodynamics the apogee of human hubris, just as the Second law of Thermodynamics is its nadir.
But haven't I already used that line to describe WWII ?
And your point being ?
Sunday, March 4, 2012
A war history that isn't just about the clash of WILLS -- impossible ?
I hope my account of WWII is a gripping, paper-turning, human-interest story - but I hope it isn't of interest to humans because it is all about humans and all about humans only.
When War History ( capital W, capital H) is seen only through the prism of the clash of human wills, it ends up as just university-level navel gazing : navel-gazing with tenure.
War can be more accurately seen as the clash of various human wills with other human wills and all of these wills clashing with the material limitations of Reality.
I really would have loved to entitle this blog as:
"1939-1945: REALITY's side of the story."
But I feared that it would simply come across as just another tell-all recounting of this perpetually popular 'epic clash of human will' .
Reality merely being a codeword for 'yet newer archival revelations about human conduct'.
Now describing Reality, that Universe we all swim in, as Nature clearly has its dangers.
(Because when Reality is reduced to Nature , it is as if its limitations are seen as existing in a lesser, parallel world from the limitless mental world of us humans.
That is our familiar delusionary world of 'name it and claim it', 'dare to dream', 'mind over matter' , 'where there is a will there is a way' , etc.
Thankfully in much of today's conventional thought , The Natural World is often seen as extending to include everything just short of human mental thoughts - ie it does included our mortal fallible bodies and their material needs.
That is a definition of Nature I can sort of live with, though I personally believe our mental activities are just as much a part of the Natural World as my pet dog's daydreams.
So when reading this blog, recast your image of Nature to encompassing everything in the Universe, including our mental reveries, and you'll do just fine....
When War History ( capital W, capital H) is seen only through the prism of the clash of human wills, it ends up as just university-level navel gazing : navel-gazing with tenure.
War can be more accurately seen as the clash of various human wills with other human wills and all of these wills clashing with the material limitations of Reality.
I really would have loved to entitle this blog as:
"1939-1945: REALITY's side of the story."
But I feared that it would simply come across as just another tell-all recounting of this perpetually popular 'epic clash of human will' .
Reality merely being a codeword for 'yet newer archival revelations about human conduct'.
Now describing Reality, that Universe we all swim in, as Nature clearly has its dangers.
(Because when Reality is reduced to Nature , it is as if its limitations are seen as existing in a lesser, parallel world from the limitless mental world of us humans.
That is our familiar delusionary world of 'name it and claim it', 'dare to dream', 'mind over matter' , 'where there is a will there is a way' , etc.
Thankfully in much of today's conventional thought , The Natural World is often seen as extending to include everything just short of human mental thoughts - ie it does included our mortal fallible bodies and their material needs.
That is a definition of Nature I can sort of live with, though I personally believe our mental activities are just as much a part of the Natural World as my pet dog's daydreams.
So when reading this blog, recast your image of Nature to encompassing everything in the Universe, including our mental reveries, and you'll do just fine....
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