[KaiserJeep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onlooker', 'H')uman instincts are powerful of that I agree with you. Evolution is slow, that I also agree. What I think you may not understand it that unlike animals who are subservient to our instincts, we are not. We can think and rationalize and thus override our instincts. We can chose higher virtues over primitive urges. It is true that is has not been common in our history but they're are examples. The American Indians had a culture which integrated family values with tribal values. The Spartans of Ancient Greece, had a warrior like culture that had a strong sense of responsibility and self-sacrifice. The point being that Culture is what allows for humans to unite in specific ways that may or may not emphasize selfish primitive urges. Or that may emphasize cooperation over competition. Culture can encapsulate a family and also a country. Thus you have Capitalism as a mode of culture that encourages these primitive reactions and that is so pervasive now in the US. In other poorer countries you will see something different, you will see people helping others even non family members as witnessed by reactions to Natural disasters. So, the manner in which humans seek to organize and run their affairs to a large degree determines the group dynamic of that group of humans. I know you would probably disagree but I believe we are capable of transcending our primitive nature and evolving into beings with a more refined intellect and a more virtuous and benevolent nature towards each other and towards Nature.

[ralfy]

As shown in some of the real data presented in this article:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... g-collapse

capitalism requires continuous growth. But that is not sustainable given limitations in resources and coupled with pollution. Given these, it is expected that at some point economic growth will stop, and with that the human population go into decline.

[Quinny]

Simply repeating the myth that capitalism is the natural state of affairs in humans and extending it to primates does not prove it.

There are lot's of studies to the contrary.

[KaiserJeep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Quinny', 'S')imply repeating the myth that capitalism is the natural state of affairs in humans and extending it to primates does not prove it.

There are lot's of studies to the contrary.

[radon1]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', '
')
Nor does Capitalism require constant growth or constant market expansion.

[onlooker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('radon1', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', '
')
Nor does Capitalism require constant growth or constant market expansion.

[KaiserJeep]

Silly twaddle. Capitalism hasn't "tended" to do anything. It has existed and provided for those that work, whether the economy grows, contracts, or stays steady state.

Then there are those pesky facts: There have been no successful long term Marxist, Socialist, Stalinist, or Communist economies - not any, ever.

[ROCKMAN]

I’ve yet to see any national economy (capitalistic, Marxist, communist, etc.) choose to negatively impact its citizens financially to any significant degree by placing the environment above the expectations of it citizens. Lots of rhetoric and some tiny Band-Aids. But as the lady said in that Wendy’s commercial: “Where the beef?”. LOL. We can amuse ourselves here by talking theories all we won’t. But that isn’t going to change what we see going on around the world today. We can assign whatever tags we want to the structure of any financial system but it doesn’t change the dynamics behind it: the basic human desires.

[ralfy]

As explained in other threads, the reason why capitalism requires and involves growth is obvious:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_accumulation

[ROCKMAN]

ralfy - Between the combination of population growth and the desire of most to improve their lives is there any system that doesn't require growth?

[onlooker]

Or another way of putting it is can humans learn to live without growth either population or in consumption etc. ?

[KaiserJeep]

The answer would be a resounding NO. We are not talking about education, culture, environmental policies, economics, or government. We are talking about millions of years of primate behaviors, where one feels the most care for self and immediate family, less for the ape troop or extended family, and active hostility towards anybody outside of this local group.

Within the last year I visited my hometown in Southern Illinois. Still has a population of 15,xxx. Still has four elementary schools, two intermediate schools, and one high school. Still has four large manufacturing plants, has good, bad, and in-between neighborhoods, over a dozen large churches, and another dozen smaller churches. Still has slightly over 50% of the people I knew in school, most of whom have seldom if ever even gone outside this place.

These are ape behaviors, tribal territory, and extended family groups. Same as Lucy the Australopithecus afarensis in 3.2 Million years BC. There probably are some observable differences in behavior between Australopithecus afarensis and Homo Sapiens Sapiens, but the bulk of ape behaviors are the same - just as today among the remaining ape species.

I really doubt that more than a few of these Southern Illinois folks have ever read Marx. Certainly it would make no difference if they had. These type of people, quietly satisfying ape instincts, are the majority of humans on Earth.

In another 3.2 Million years, there will be observable differences between the new species of human and Homo Sapiens Sapiens, just as there certainly are between Australopithecus afarensis and ourselves. Again, most behaviors will be the same.

That is the pace of evolutionary change. Argue, wring your hands, venerate Marx if you must - it makes no difference in human behavior, which has not changed one iota in recorded history.

[radon1]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ROCKMAN', 'I')’ve yet to see any national economy (capitalistic, Marxist, communist, etc.)

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ROCKMAN', 'I')’ve yet to see any national economy (capitalistic, Marxist, communist, etc.) choose to negatively impact its citizens financially to any significant degree by placing the environment above the expectations of it citizens.

[onlooker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')f you go way back to the days before agriculture, human growth in population and consumption was barely a trickle. It took thousands of years for human numbers to double back then. You could even argue that the vast majority of human history was at levels of no or very low growth. The rapid growth in human numbers and consumption is a more recent phenomenon, relatively speaking.

[ROCKMAN]

K - You mean the same native Americans that committed their own form of genocide from time to time as well as taking slaves and killing to expand territories? That a nice romantic view you have of those folks but what about this hypothetical: what if Europeans hadn't taken over those lands and the native population grew to unsustainable levels? Same eventual situation that led Europeans to invade the north American continent perhaps. Of course being a hypothetical there's no provable answer. But reverse the rolls: what if native Americans with a booming population had invaded Mexico and Central America? Again one can only make up an unprovable answer. But whose to ay native Americans would not have followed a similar path given the opportunity.

[kublikhan]

I was not trying to paint them as pacifists. I was speaking of their attitudes on environmental stewardship. To me, there appears to be a clear difference in how our cultures viewed nature. Our culture seeks to bend nature to our will. Dominate it, exploit it, etc. Where as the native american culture sought to live in balance and harmony with nature. Were their failures in pursuit of this ideal? Certainly. But there is still a sharp contrast in how they viewed nature and tried to live in balance with it. Ecologists today have to actually teach us that we are part of nature, not above it. All too often however this message falls on deaf ears. Our culture infused our heads with other ideas. Yet this message was already a core tenant of native american culture.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'F')or many years, ecologists have been trying to get people to think of the world in ecological terms— that is, seeing the interconnectedness of the natural world and by doing it through purely empirical research. More specifically, to see humans not as rulers of the earth but as fellow citizens with all life forms and to see the biosphere as a continually conserved natural order of nutrients cycling through both living and non-living parts of the environment. This interconnectedness is evident in genome analysis, as every living organism shares vastly similar genes. All of this information would never have to be taught to a typical Native American, however. Their entire method of living is inherently ecological because, to them, everything in the natural world was interrelated and shared the same life. Their lifestyles as well as their religion only served to emphasize this relationship between man and his environment. Modern ecologists have only recently started to appreciate Native Americans’ ecological practices.

The Natives did, in fact, pay more attention to their environment much more than any other known culture of the time because nature, to them, stood for a representation of the sacred. “If we describe a Native American as a conservationist, we do not mean that he calculates sustainable yield into the distant future… but rather that he does not waste or ‘despoil, exhaust or extinguish,’ and [he] leaves the environment and resources like animal populations in a usable state for succeeding generations.”

Lastly, the most fundamental difference, generally speaking, between Native American and European cultures is the fact that the Natives viewed every form of life as having an intrinsic value, not simply instrumental.

[onlooker]

This is quite logical and simple to understand. In the past people had limited power over nature and were subject to its limitations and parameters. It is modern civilization which utilizing planet changing technology has sought to dominate and bend Nature to its will. Modern humans have risen above some of the limitations and parameters of Nature and that was another reason we seemed to detach from any type of subservience and deference to Nature.

[kublikhan]

Well technology is part of it. But Christianity and our philosophers also seemed to have had a hand in shaping this view.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he profound influence of a Judeo-Christian tradition on the western perception of nature was noted early in the debate about the causes of environmental degradation. Lynn White argues "the present increasing disruption of the global environment is the product of a dynamic technology and science which […] cannot be understood historically apart from distinctive attitudes toward nature which are deeply grounded in Christian dogma" (White 1967). The Bible seems to indicate in various passages that nature was designed to meet human needs exclusively. The spirit is separated from nature and what matters is the individual relationship between God the creator and humans as his superior creatures. Unlike Animism, where nature itself is worshiped and praised, Christian belief segregates the sphere of sacredness from the natural environment, thus assigning it to the level of a supportive structure. The story of Creation is essentially a story of authorisation and legitimation. God transfers his unlimited authority over all the living creatures of the world to Man, making him the "Lord of nature".

The spread of Judeo-Christian culture into environments substantially different from its place of origin – the deserts and semi-arid zone of Palestine, for example – has also contributed to the dominant ideology of human-nature relations. As the simple and hostile environment of the JudeoChristian birthplace was abandoned for the more complex and resource-rich environment of northern Europe, without changing the basic perception of nature as an enemy to be defeated, the ideology of mastery over nature spread to regions where it could do substantial harm.

But despite the many religious justifications of human authority over the earth and its creatures, Man did not perceive himself as an absolute ruler, but as God’s loyal servant. As nature was God’s creation, it was deemed sacred, and thus protected against destruction to a certain degree. It was only after secularisation took hold in Europe following the Reformation, that this safety valve broke down and allowed for the full-scale application of the disastrous ideology of control (Leiss 1974: 34). The Renaissance freed the mindset of domination from the limitations of religious dogma, but it failed to provide for a new ethic capable of regulating the relation between humankind and nature in the absence of a religious justification for the "rape of the earth".

The work of Francis Bacon is an illuminating example of the embeddedness of scientific progress and the domination of nature in a religious context. "By casting his plea for scientific progress in a familiar religious mold, he managed to win wide acceptance for a novel conception of mastery over nature, and at the same time he unwittingly charted a course for later generations which led to the gradual secularisation of this idea" (Leiss 1974: 53). It was Bacon's achievement in formulating the concept of mastery over nature as a new scientific and practical enterprise (Russell 1961: 527). René Descartes’ contribution to the development of modern science contains the deterministic segregation of mind and matter and the method of reductionism that led to a purely mechanistic worldview. This approach to scientific enquiry "inevitably led to a fragmented view of the world – to a focus on the individual parts of a system rather than on the organic whole, on studying the way in which the constituent elements operated separately rather than the ways in which they interacted" (Ponting 1991: 147). This resulted in the perception of humans and nature as governed strictly by the laws of physics, and thus it favoured the exploitation of the one by the other. It was Isaac Newton at the end of this essential phase of scientific development who transcended all these efforts by formulating an abstract and geometrised universe that was governed by the one fundamental principle of gravitation (Braudel 1993: 368). This substantial achievement enabled future generations of scientists to systemise the forces of nature into an abstract set of basic principles and rules, which resulted in a radical alienation of western civilisation from the notion of nature as a complex and mystical entity.

[Shaved Monkey]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onlooker', 'O')r another way of putting it is can humans learn to live without growth either population or in consumption etc. ?